Monthly Archives: January 2009

Staff cuts and short-term thinking

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 30, 2009
That sound you hear is the rapidly accelerating crash of dominoes. The mainstream legal media is tracking, body blow by body blow, the shocking personnel reductions taking place at law firms throughout the US and UK. One after another, firms are laying off employees, and it seems each firm’s announcement gives three others the confidence [...]
Posted in Management, Recession, Research | 9 Comments

The crossed purposes of legal education

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 23, 2009
One of the signs that change is underway in the legal profession is that elephants in the room are becoming easier to talk about. One such pachyderm is growing increasingly obvious in legal education: the disconnect between what prospective law students imagine about the profession and what they eventually find when entering the legal workforce. A [...]
Posted in Law School | 8 Comments

Avalanche alert

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 21, 2009
“[F]irms still have too many lawyers,” says the Chicago Tribune in the course of a rather grim 2009 forecast for American law firms. That might not be a problem for too much longer, because we’re about due for another round of bloodletting. But the next stage of the inexorable rationalization of the private bar won’t [...]
Posted in Big Firms, Finance, Recession, Talent | 1 Comment

Deconstructing prestige

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 20, 2009
I’m currently taking part in an intriguing conversation at Legal OnRamp about the reasons why GCs hire prestigious, big-name law firms. A recurring theme in the discussion is that in-house lawyers often default to using big, well-known (and often highly inefficient) firms because of the protection these firms’ prestige affords to corporate counsel. Just as [...]
Posted in Big Firms, Marketing | 1 Comment

Renovating or tearing down?

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 14, 2009
I grew up in a small city of about 80,000 and went to law school in a similarly sized town, so my first experience of a major metropolitan center was when I began working in downtown Toronto. I remember being a little overwhelmed by the massive bank towers in the financial district — not a [...]
Posted in Big Firms, Billing, Innovation | 3 Comments

India: Beyond legal process outsourcing

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 9, 2009
The symmetry was remarkable. Magic Circle icon Clifford Chance caused major waves in the mainstream legal media this week by announcing plans to cut up to 80 lawyers from its flagship London office, about 10% of the legal professionals there. The move, following layoff notices issued to 20 litigation associates in CC’s New York office [...]
Posted in Globalization, Outsourcing | 1 Comment

Law21 honoured with CLawBies

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 1, 2009
I don’t have any other words for it — I’m honoured and humbled that Law21 received the Best Canadian Law Blog Award, and tied (with David Bilinsky’s marvellous Thoughtful Legal Management) for the Practice Management Award, in the 2008 edition of Steve Matthews‘ CLawBie Awards for Canadian legal blogging. It’s just a huge compliment when [...]
Posted in Law21 | 4 Comments

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