by Bruce | March 28, 2009 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Strategy
Is capitalism dead? The Financial Times has an ongoing series, The Future of Capitalism (I haven’t read it all, but "dubious" would seem to be the most apt one-word review so far), Knowledge @ Wharton has "revisited" the question...
by Bruce | March 23, 2009 | Adam Smith Himself, Articles, Book Reviews, Finance
From time to time, people ask me what I’m reading when trying to figure out what is going on in the economy these days. A glib response might be, "anything I can get my hands on," but the question deserves a more thoughtful response, so herewith a book...
by Bruce | March 17, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
The news out of Dewey & LeBoeuf–that 66 partners, or about one in five of their 350 partners, have seen their compensation cut over the past 15 months by up to 80%–begs for an explanation, or at least some commmentary. First, what’s going on in...
by Bruce | March 15, 2009 | Articles, Cultural Considerations
Time for a time-out. In all the obsessiveness and compulsiveness about the impact that this little economic interregnum we’re gamely marching through is having on our firms, our P&L’s, and even our personal balance sheets, let us pause for a moment to...
by Bruce | March 13, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Well, that’ll teach me… The volume of commentary following my publication earlier this week of “The Great De-Leveraging” has been unprecedented. Depending on your attitude, that is either deeply gratifying or almost overwhelming. As one who...
by Bruce | March 8, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Just as I was thinking it was about time to publish a column on the topic of "leverage" at law firms (roughly speaking, the associate to partner ratio, although there’s more than one way to calculate something that people will call...