Monthly Archives: August 2009

The real impact of private equity

It’s coming to the attention of many North American lawyers that our overseas colleagues are or soon will be selling equity interests in their law firms. Earlier this summer, American Lawyer profiled the progress of pioneering publicly traded law firm Slater & Gordon in Australia. More recently, Bloomberg News announced that at least three [...]
Posted in Finance, Innovation | 3 Comments

The recession, so far

Surely by now you’ve heard the great news that that the recession is over. That’s a relief, huh? It’s good to know things can now start getting back to normal, especially in the legal marketplace — all this talk of major change was making us nervous. I don’t know about you, but the relentless good cheer [...]
Posted in Recession | 1 Comment

Just in case

“Stuff expands to fill the space available.” If you’ve ever owned a closet, basement or garage at some point in your life, you know how true that is. The corollary, of course, is that the less space you have, the less stuff you find you really need. I once moved six times in the space [...]
Posted in Innovation, Outsourcing | Leave a comment

Tr.im and the risks of social media

Shortly after starting this blog in January 2008, I copied-and-pasted my first ten posts and emailed them to my parents, who were not blog-friendly but who were very interested to see what I was writing. (Are parents great, or what?) The next month, I emailed another bunch of posts, and from then on, it became [...]
Posted in Technology | 5 Comments

The firms of the future

“Does the future belong to virtual law firms?” That question was posed by an American Lawyer article earlier this week that focused on Virtual Law Partners, a growing firm nominally based in Silicon Valley but in fact operating, well, wherever its lawyers are. Virtual firms — two others, FSB Legal Counsel and Rimon Law Group, [...]
Posted in Big Firms, Innovation, Solo & Small Firm | 2 Comments

Three hotspots for change

I thought I’d bring your attention to three upcoming conferences that crystallize the enormous changes taking place in the legal services marketplace these days. I aim to attend all three, but if you can get to even one of them, you’ll be exposed to some tremendous insights into what’s happening in the legal profession right [...]
Posted in Innovation | Leave a comment

All good things…

My newest column is up and running at Slaw, where I’m always honoured it has a place. You can also find it directly below: ============================================ “Eighty percent of the poor in the United States are unable to afford a lawyer or find pro bono help for their civil legal problems, according to the American Bar Association.” That [...]
Posted in Clients, Purpose | 1 Comment

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