Category Archives: Talent

Learning to run

There’s an old expression among professional sports coaches: “You can’t teach speed.” It’s usually meant to indicate that there are things you can train athletes to do well (skills) and things that are simply God-given (raw talent), and it encourages the traditional view that talent is more valuable. I’ve come to believe differently. In most [...]
Also posted in CLE, Law School | 6 Comments

The new capitals of law

A minor parlour game for BigLaw cognoscenti is the question of which city will be the next world capital of law. New York has held the unofficial title for many years, although London made a powerful case throughout the 2000s. Down the road, who knows? Maybe Hong Kong or Shanghai, possibly New Delhi or Mumbai; [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Outsourcing | 2 Comments

Are you selling the lawyer or the firm?

From England and Wales, the newest hotbed of innovation in the current legal marketplace, comes word that the first nationwide solicitor franchise is on its way. Legal Futures reports that Face2Face Solicitors “is initially aimed at small private client law firms and will provide franchisee solicitors with centralized back-office systems – including accounts, IT and [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Marketing, Solo & Small Firm | 5 Comments

The year of the free-agent lawyer

Thomson’s acquisition of Pangea3 last November capped off what I think we can fairly call the year of law firm outsourcing. Among 2010′s LPO highlights, in chronological order, were: the departure of Rio Tinto’s GC to take a top position with CPA Global, Microsoft’s move to send general legal work to India, WilmerHale’s outsourcing of [...]
Posted in Talent | 10 Comments

Can’t buy me motivation

I still remember the story told by a friend of mine who quit his job at a large national law firm. The income, of course, was great. But he had become increasingly unhappy with the work he was doing, the people he was doing it for, and the culture of the firm for which he [...]
Also posted in Satisfaction | Leave a comment

Law firms and the JetBlue guy

Even if former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater didn’t plan his famous chute-deploying resignation in advance, he seems ready and willing to exploit the moment, perhaps to land a reality-TV hosting gig. If it does turn out that his Big Quit was staged (like that of Elyse Porterfield, the “Dry-Erase Girl” whose hoax didn’t even [...]
Also posted in Competition, New Lawyers | 4 Comments

Law firms on demand

What if you could take a law firm, carve away all the parts of it you don’t like, and keep all the parts you did? What if, from the client perspective, you could get rid of high and rising prices, time-based bills, gratuitous overhead costs and unfamiliarity with your business? What if, from the lawyer [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Clients | 8 Comments

Targeting the variable fee

For as long as most lawyers can remember, the billable hour has defined, powered, and shaped their law firms. It determines how lawyers work, how they sell their work, how much they earn, and how they assess and reward their employees. It breeds inefficient, overworked lawyers and frustrated, resentful clients; but it has also proved [...]
Also posted in Billing, Innovation | 5 Comments

Breaking the big firm

My strongest, greatest fear by far, if it’s not too soon to look to the “other side” of this financial system meltdown and general economic interregnum, is not that things in law-land will look overly different when we emerge, but that they won’t look different enough. That observation comes from Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Billing, Diversity | 3 Comments

The best and the brightest?

It’s a small thing, but it’s been bothering me disproportionately, so I want to say a few words about one of my least favourite current phrases in the law:  “the best and the brightest.” It’s normally used in a talent recruitment or institutional marketing capacity to describe the very small group of the very best [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Law School | 15 Comments

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