February 2004 Archives

The Economist magazine has a characteristically lucid—and characteristically opinionated—special section in the issue of 26 Feb 2004 entitled "International Law Firms," and posing the question:
"Is it time to abandon the idea of assembling a truly international law firm?  [Does] commercial law [call for] small local specialists rather than big global generalists?"
Their answer, in a nutshell, is that duelling economic models of partner compensation between the U.S. and the UK militate against a large wave of mega-mergers.

Bonus fact:  Nine of the ten highest-profits-per-partner firms are headquartered in New York.  Let's hear it for the home town!   And the tenth is not in London.

The American Lawyer has an article recapping partner "arrivals" (read: lateral hires) and
"departures" (can you say, "Brobeck?") over more or less the past year,
and the results, while fodder for gossip, are not susceptible to rigorous
analysis since there is no distinction between firms with a determined
strategy of cherry-picking desirable laterals by one's and by two's
vs. firms that happened to complete significant merger or acquisition
last year.

In any event, here are the tables summarizing the arrivals and
the departures.

LLRX has a new article up discussing the experience of Bryan-Cave in attempting to determine the Return on Investment of a major firm-wide Knowledge Management
initiative.

First, the article discusses, from a conceptual perspective, whether the
notion of ROI even applies to a KM project.  Traditionally,
ROI is easy to measure (meaning hard to fudge) with cost-saving initiatives,
such as scanning and digitizing a sub-basement full of documents, but
much harder to measure (and easier to blue-sky) with revenue-generating
initiatives, such as a marketing campaign.
Knowledge Management yields benefits, of course, which are far more
intangible even than marketing.  How can one put a price tag on
such things as:

• more efficient and effective collaboration


• faster and more targeted responses to client issues


• less rote work and more high-quality work