Law21 Twitter Updates- This article on national law firm regulation was password-protected the other day; here's an accessible version: http://bit.ly/9fBDje
- More law schools should follow Northwestern's lead, swap tradition for rationality: http://bit.ly/9DQScz
- @peterfrankl All the more reason why firms shouldn't charge by the pilot, but by the successful flight. :-) #fixedfees
- Thx to @jasnwilsn @stevematthews @glambert @advocatesstudio for great comments on my case law update piece: http://bit.ly/cDJ00L
Category Archives: Management
Core competence: 6 new skills now required of lawyers
Up till now, the necessary and sufficient skill set for lawyers has looked something like this (in alphabetical order):
Analytical ability
Attention to detail
Logical reasoning
Persuasiveness
Sound judgment
Writing ability (okay, that one’s apparently optional for some)
This list doesn’t include such characteristics as knowledge of the law, courtroom presence, or integrity — these aren’t “skills,” per se, so much as [...]
Also posted in Clients, Collaboration, Competition, New Lawyers 12 Comments
Don’t be stupid
Google is of course famous for choosing the motto “Don’t be evil.” A lot of law firms could do themselves a favour if they adopted a slight variant: “Don’t be stupid.”
Law firms love to roll out big announcements of one kind or another, this or that latest success or significant hire. But it’s in the [...]
Posted in Management 2 Comments
Your invisible professionals
So here’s a typical situation: I’m assigning an article for one of our CBA publications on a law firm practice topic — say, business development, or extranet use, or associate retention efforts, or what have you. And I want to find interviewees with knowledge and expertise to speak with our writers for said article. So [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Technology 10 Comments
Don’t blame the recession
Bear with me for a moment while I start with a media story. The Washington Post has announced another round of buyouts of writers and editors, including several very senior and respected professionals. Commenting on the impact of the mass exodus is Post writer Howard Kurtz (HT to Rob Hyndman), who notes:
“The talented reporters, editors [...]
Surviving a succession crisis
Law.com’s Small Firm Business features an article today about succession planning for law firms. I’ve seen a lot of these articles lately, talking about the importance of transitioning clients from one generation of lawyers to the next, encouraging leadership development among younger lawyers, and motivating more senior practitioners to mentor the younger ones and share [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Generations 3 Comments
The culture-driven law firm
The era of the free-agent lawyer, and the law firm lateral hiring frenzy that it spawned, is drawing to a close. The rise of the culture-driven law firm is at hand.
It’s going to take me a while to explain how I got here. I’ll try to do this in two parts.
1. Followership in law firms
This [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Leadership, Talent 5 Comments
Law firm success metrics
How successful is your law firm? A question that broad is bound to invite myriad answers, depending on when and to whom you pose it. The traditional terms by which lawyers have described their firms’ success have been financial, most recently through Profits Per Partner (PPP) and then, after non-equity partners were introduced into the [...]
Also posted in Big Firms Leave a comment
White-water change management
If you help make the decisions at a large law firm anywhere in the world, I assume you’ve been keeping tabs on the developing impact of the UK’s Legal Services Act. There’s been talk about the fallout from the Clementi Report for quite awhile now, especially regarding share offerings by law firms. Seminars are coming [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Innovation Leave a comment
Moneyball, women and law
Google my name and you’ll find I’ve written a few things about baseball, mostly during my time as a co-founder of and contributor to Batter’s Box, a top-notch Canadian baseball blog. As it happens, one of my favourite baseball books (outside of Thomas Boswell’s and Bill James’s works) isn’t really, I don’t think, about the [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Innovation Comments closed
The other talent war