Accountability? Who, Me?
Russell Long (1918—2003) was a US Senator from Louisiana for nearly 40 years (1948—1987) and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee for nearly half that period. As such, he was an expert on the US...
View ArticleM&A Due Diligence With a Soul
To paraphrase the gone-but-not-forgotten E.F. Hutton campaign (I did work on Wall Street—I’m allowed these memories), when a Director Emeritus of McKinsey, who founded and led the firm’s global...
View ArticleM&A “Cultural Due Diligence”
The widely experienced and catholically curious Lee Pacchia (formerly of Bloomberg Law, now at his own Mimesis Law) asked me to stop by his studio last week and talk about the role of culture in law...
View ArticleCan Big Firms Innovate?
“Innovation” seems to be on everyone’s lips these days. Among other things, the problems are: Many people, lawyers in particular, are stumped when it comes to describing what “innovation” actually is;...
View ArticlePricing Power
The growth of professionals in Law Land with the word “pricing” in their title has been explosive over the past couple of years. It’s a trend we applaud loudly and fervently, so perhaps it’s worth a...
View Article“Collegial & Collaborative?”: Let’s Find Out
We’ve written before about law firms’ nearly universal use of the terms “collegial” and “collaborative” to define what makes their cultures, each and every one, special. So indiscriminate is this usage...
View Article“Collegial and Collaborative?” Really? (Take Two)
Two weeks ago we invited you to take a survey (three to five minutes of your time, tops) to try to get to the bottom of whether law firms are really "collegial and collaborative," as they are...
View ArticleDifferent Price Points/One Brand?
I’ve previously mentioned the Business Leadership Summit being organized by The Lawyer, taking place in London September 22—23. (More information here; registration here.) On the afternoon of Wednesday...
View ArticleLetter from London: Part II
This is the second in a two-part series recapping some of our thoughts, analyses, and impressions gleaned during our time in London late last month. The first installment, where we discussed Business...
View ArticleLetter from the Pacific Northwest
This fall we had the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time in the Pacific Northwest—multiple trips to Seattle and Portland—and became better acquainted with the dynamics of that particular...
View Article“Collegial & Collaborative?” Guess Again
A few months ago we invited you all to take a survey addressing how truly “collegial and collaborative” your firm is, and how well prepared you felt (a) to be able to knowledgeably point clients...
View ArticleOrganizational Behavior: A Manual
A week or so ago, I happened across a training manual offering instructions on proper behavior within organizations. Here I take the liberty of quoting extensively from it. I ask one favor of you and...
View ArticleThe “Big Three” Annual Reports on Law Land
With the release last week of the Annual Report from Georgetown Law’s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession, the “Big Three” annual reports—Altman-Weil’s Law Firms in Transition,...
View ArticleHow the Mighty Fall: Part I
Jim Collins has authored or co-authored six books that have sold over 10-million copies altogether. Good to Great may be the most famous (published in 2001, still the #1 best seller on Amazon in...
View ArticleHow the Mighty Fall: Part II
At the most straightforward (superficial?) level, the “undisciplined pursuit of more”—Collins’s stage 2 in his framework of decline—would seem to follow logically and almost inevitably from stage 1,...
View ArticleFive Management Styles: Lessons from Silicon Valley
On a cross-country flight this week, I read most of Smarter Faster Better, by Charles Duhigg, currently on the NYT’s top 10 hardcover/nonfiction list of best-selling books. It’s fair to characterize...
View Article“Agile Working” and Office Design
Having spent last week in London, where every firm worthy of its PR news feed has at least mentioned “agile working,” it’s worth spending a few moments reflecting on what’s behind that shorthand. The...
View ArticleLetter from London
Back in New York from a solid week of meetings in London (17 in five days) and a few observations, reflections, musings, and speculations come to the fore. And no, these will pointedly not include...
View ArticleHappy 4th! (Even to George III)
With the world seemingly departing from the familiar for parts unknown almost anywhere one looks these days (the Middle East’s evidently insatiable crescendo of chaos, Brexit, the paranormal US...
View ArticleLetter from London
As regular readers know is my custom, when I return from a trip to London I typically endeavo(u)r to distill my reactions in a brief report. As my trip this week was especially brief (shy of 72 hours),...
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