Practice Group Management
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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What’s It Worth To You?
Aric Press, always worth reading, has an especially subtle column out this month, Why Pricing Billable Work May Be Too Important to Leave to the Lawyers. Here’s his key insight, which I envy for its astuteness: Lawyers have trouble talking about money. That’s a gross generalization, but it’s one I’ve come to after spending the last month
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Growth is Dead: Part 10-Clients
In Part 8 in this series, we talked about “Now What?” in terms of three particular approaches you could take that were all, essentially, inward-focused and things you can pretty much control inside the firm’s four walls: acknowledge you have competition; hire the best professional “C-suite” staff you can find; and articulate a non-generic strategy—and
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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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Lateral Hires & Guarantees Deconstructed
A Wharton School professor has analyzed the performance, and pay levels, of external hires vs. internal staff promotions. He used personnel data from a division of a major US investment bank for 2003—2009, and the characteristics of that talent market are remarkably similar to our own: Investment banking, [Professor Matthew] Bidwell writes, represents “an interesting
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Four Foolproof Steps to Sapping Morale
This is not a piece about “unknown unknowns.” No, it’s a piece about something that most of us in any position of authority secretly fear we’re doing. Actually, there are two groups of senior people who probably do n’t secretly fear they’re doing this: Those who are so consummately superb at what they do that
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The Cocktail Trolleys
I doubt many of you, gentle readers, follow David Carr, who writes the Media Equation column for the Monday Business section of The New York Times, but I commend him to you as an enlightened, thoughtful, and experienced observer at the intersection of media, business, and culture. (I do not know David personally.) But his current
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Invitation to Take Law Firm Business Practices Survey
Adam Smith, Esq. and David Freeman Consulting Group are teaming up to conduct a unique survey of the legal profession’s business practices that you might find extremely valuable. If you’re reading Adam Smith, Esq., we don’t need to tell you that law firms today are navigating uncharted waters. Fees are under intense pressure, the lateral
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