Partnership Structures
A law firm taxonomy: Introduction
We humans like to put things in categories. And while we can get it plain wrong, or mix up two categories benignly or malignly, there’s no question our propensity for categorization—from friend or foe and food to poison, to Linnaeus, to the periodic table, to the Dewey decimal system—has gotten us a long way on
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Strategy & Partner Pay
Herewith the second article by Richard Rapp. Thanks, Richard!—Bruce. Law firm managers who are planning large-scale, hubristic expansion-by-acquisition should study the Dewey LeBoeuf morality play very closely. The rest of us should not. It’s a distraction that diverts attention from what matters closer to home. Permit me to analogize: Those of us who are
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Richard Rapp Joins Adam Smith, Esq.
It is with great personal and professional pleasure that we announce Richard Rapp is joining Adam Smith, Esq. as Senior Advisor. Those of you who have learned even a little about the consulting side of Adam Smith, Esq. know that we have remained small by choice, reflecting our conviction that the most challenging and sophisticated
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“Growth is Dead” Now an e-Book
We are delighted to announce that we have just published the complete 12-part series Growth is Dead as an e-book. Demand from you, Dear Readers, to be able to have the entire series available in one spot, was unprecedented and trying to satisfy those requests was frankly one of our primary motivations. (But we must confess
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Growth is Dead: Part 12-The S-Curve
As we come to the final installment of the Growth is Dead series, I hope the challenge I’ve laid out for us is clear. Excess capacity Stagnant demand Cut-throat or “suicidal” discounting Unprecedented pressure on prices, from all directions, including who clients will pay for, and rates and realization Exhaustion of cost-cutting as a tactic
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Growth is Dead: Part 11-Granting Your Wish
We’ll have one more installment in our “Growth is Dead” series but let’s focus today on trying to synthesize a few themes that have been pervasive topics here on Adam Smith, Esq., since at least September 15, 2008, and even before, and look at their implications for “Now What?,” on the assumption that the thesis
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Growth is Dead: Part 7-Psychology
At the end of our last piece, I asked aloud whether we as lawyers are intellectually and emotionally capable of adapting to the new market landscape, suggested that adapting would require experimentation and—yes—failure, and noted that countries and industries that did not reflexively punish failure enjoyed stronger long-term growth. Let’s talk about that some more.
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Growth is Dead: Part 3-Expectations
Our third installment in this series addresses partner expectations. Here’s the problem: There’s about to be a collision with reality. Let’s start with some data. In the quarter century since the The American Lawyer first published the AmLaw 100, growth has been impressive: Total gross revenue for the 100 firms has gone up more than
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Honor and Dishonor
Last week we published a column noting that today “discussion of incentives often begins from the false belief that only cash can influence behavior.” This remark—the heart of the piece in as few words as possible—prompted a regular reader to offer a comment so compelling that it’s worthy of reprising and expanding upon in a
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Assuming the Worst (and getting it)
ITN (a British-based independent news service) recently published a poll finding trust in the financial sector is at an all-time low, with just 10% of respondents believing bankers tell the truth. This puts bankers even lower than journalists and politicians. Yet if trust is the bedrock of financial intermediation (it is), how can the system
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