by Bruce | March 10, 2022 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Ineffable, Leadership, Recruiting, Strategy
I don’t have the grey cells or, frankly, the spare time to keep track, blow by blow, of the Great Associate Comp Wars of 2022, but fortunately Above the Law does and has. From January 20th of this year, when Milbank kicked off the festival of riches arms’ race,...
by Bruce | January 7, 2022 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Recruiting, Strategy
Every once in awhile, a piece of legal journalism–heck, we’re not grading on a curve here, folks–business and economics journalism with the legal industry as its subject–is so thorough, nuanced, and generously sourced that it demands a tip of...
by Bruce | August 2, 2021 | About the Site, Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Recruiting
In today’s FT, Andrew Hill, their gifted and prolific management essayist, published a column of that name (link works only for FT subscribers) discussing the unheard-of pressures on corporate deal lawyers–partners and associates alike–given the...
by Bruce | April 27, 2021 | Articles, Book Reviews, Compensation, Cultural Considerations
Across my desk a few weeks ago came BigLaw: Money & Meaning in the Modern Law Firm by Mitt Regan and Lisa Rohrer (U. Chicago Press: 2021). (I have known Mitt, a law Professor at Georgetown, for over a decade, and consider him a friend, as well as one of the most...
by Bruce | February 10, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Recruiting, Strategy
The following column is by Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq. One of the most vexing issues for law firms is that of under-performing lawyers. And, let’s be clear from the get-go, we’re talking about chronic underperformance; not someone having, say, one bad...
by Bruce | February 1, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, M&A, Strategy
When we ended Part 2 of this series, we had discussed the data showing (1) that the conventional wisdom about the AmLaw firms growing relentlessly to the sky was, uh, Fake News (h/t to Jae Um), (2) that the real picture is one of increasing segmentation among law...