Superstar or Renegade? Keeping Toxic Lawyers Out of Your Partnership
“Superstar employees are the obsession of the corporate world,” a recent article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) begins. “They’re highly sought after, given the most attention and the best opportunities, generously rewarded, and expressly reassured after setbacks.” Does this remind you of any members of your law firm’s equity partner class? Especially those recruited laterally […]
Five Signs of “One Firm Thinking”
Managing partners sometimes complain to me about the lack of collaboration and teamwork in their firms. Then they shrug and declare, “It’s the nature of lawyers to be individualists.” The implication is that nothing can be done about it. I contend that a good leader can move a firm toward “one firm thinking” despite those […]
Strategic Pricing: Creating Conditions to Succeed
The difference between pricing legal work the way law firms have always done it and strategic pricing is simple: The former looks at the price tag from the law firm’s point of view, focusing on revenue and profitability. The latter focuses not on how much clients can be convinced to pay, but on perceived bang […]
Illuminating the Future
Today, speakers, writers and consultants in our field are besieged with questions about the impact of change on every aspect of the legal profession. Law societies, bar associations, corporate legal departments, private practice law firms and sole practitioners alike all want some expert to illuminate for them the mysterious path into the future. My advice […]
Succession Doesn’t Just Happen
“We need a succession plan. My partners and I formed this firm thirty years ago. We started with clients aplenty, and spent the early and middle years – in fact, up until a few years ago – tasking younger partners to service the business we already had through the impressive rainmaking skills of the founding […]
In Successful Law Firms, Actions Speak Louder than Plans
“Doing” wins out over “Strategizing” Studies predictably show that firms with a plan do better than firms without a plan. As a managing partner, you need to determine whether your firm actually has a plan or not. Here is a test that will tell you if you do – Choose a member of your firm […]
Preparing for an Unpredictable Future: Scenario Planning Tips
It hardly needs saying that the future is difficult or impossible to predict. Law firm pessimists often indulge in catastrophizing many situations that they think will be threatening or disastrous to the firm. Optimists, on the other hand, may become even narcissistic in exaggerating the firm’s special market position and often over-emphasize the chances of […]
Better Than Weeds?
Law firms are struggling with surplus office space, and the common “better than weeds” approach of hiring lawyers to fill empty offices often leads to poor hiring decisions and higher costs, making it more beneficial to downsize or sublease space instead.
How Managing Partners Can Support Law Firm Administrators
Note: This article was originally published in the Jan/Feb 2015 edition of Administrator’s Advantage, the newsletter of the Greater Chicago Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators Managing partners hope that administrators will cause fee earners to do the following: show enough self-discipline to record their time daily; optimize the use of the firm’s IT […]
The “Cheap Grace” of Compensation Systems
I’m always impressed with how much time many of my clients spend wrestling with their compensation systems. The animating seduction of compensation typically doesn’t bring with it a law-firm appetite for changing what is already in place, but it does tend to make up a lot of firm mindshare. When you think about it, though, […]