by Bruce | December 27, 2008 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Strategy
Actually, the formulation of that headline that I prefer these days is the famous inversion by the Nobel economist Paul Samuelson: "If you’re so rich how come you’re so dumb?" And yes, that brings us promptly to the Bernard Madoff scandal. Among...
by Bruce | December 25, 2008 | About the Site, Articles
Rockefeller Center, Christmas 2008 Photograph by Bruce MacEwen
by Bruce | December 22, 2008 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, M&A, Practice Group Management, Strategy
A Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays story of the first order: As noted this morning by The New York Times, Above The Law, and The WSJ Law Blog, Sonnenschein is acquiring about 100 lawyers, including 40 partners, from 160-year-old Thacher Proffitt &...
by Bruce | December 21, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." —Mark Twain, in a cable from London to US publishers, who had mistakenly printed his obituary. And so, for the entirety of my career, has it been the case with predictions of the demise of the...
by Bruce | December 12, 2008 | Articles, Ineffable
A smart friend of mine, in a conversation apropos the financial meltdown, recently wondered if people "aren’t reading too many newspapers and not enough history." He has a point. So forthwith, a little history. According to McKinsey in...
by Bruce | December 8, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Leadership, Strategy
An unspoken, and certainly uncelebrated, aspect of the law firm associate personnel model is built-in attrition. "Built-in" can have two traditional meanings, and one new one: Traditional A: They wash out of their own accord, because of a variety of factors:...