I’m reluctant — wisely, I think — to say much about women in the private practice of law. They tell you to “write what you know,” and since I neither work in a law firm nor check off “female” on my census form, I’m doubly unqualified to say much on the subject. But I will… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Big Firms
Transforming the practising bar
If you’d like a glimpse of the legal profession of the near-to-mid-future, look to London. Yesterday, the UK’s Bar Standards Board launched a consultation paper concerning the effect on barristers of the new Legal Services Act, which received Royal Assent last October. (The Solicitors Regulation Authority addressed the LSA’s impact earlier.) Here’s LegalWeek and The… Read more »
Coping with fewer associates
The Ottawa Citizen ran an article over the weekend that caught my eye, thanks in part to this succinct summary of the gigantic demographic challenge facing the North American economy: Baby boomers are retiring and the number of young adults behind them is on an irreversible slide. Starting in 2011, Canada’s workforce will lose two… Read more »
Eversheds: how to set new client standards
I was jazzed a year ago when Eversheds struck a deal with Tyco to become the service and manufacturing multinational’s primary outside counsel, reducing Tyco’s complement of law firms for most legal matters from 250 to 1. Those who doubted the wisdom of the arrangement at the time worried that Tyco would miss out on… Read more »
Something’s actually happening
There’s a lot of buzz building about an article in today’s New York Times with the rather odd title “Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms.” It summarizes a recent rash of new business models in American law firms, from flextime for lawyers to flat-fee bills for clients to alternative billable-hour schemes and more. It’s the second… Read more »
Beyond work/life balance
Seth Godin, whom you’ll see linked fairly often in this space, writes about the new workaholic, the person who’s motivated not by fear but by passion: “The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. …[T]he new face of work, at least… Read more »
The value proposition for associates
From the Recorder comes news of a 220-lawyer firm in San Diego that has decided to abandon lockstep, year-of-call-based compensation for its associates. Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps has created no fewer than 14 different levels of associate compensation, based on what type of law the associate practises and how good she is at it…. Read more »
Law firm size: past, present and future
After making an offhand comment in a previous post, that only about 10% of all Canadian lawyers were in large law firms, I began to wonder if that was, you know, accurate. So I checked the statistical breakdowns available at the Federation of Law Societies of Canada website and confirmed that yes, out of 79,147… Read more »