The emerging new capitals of law
New York, London and Hong Kong may vie for the title of world’s financial capital. But the debate isn’t so straightforward in the law, with centers like Gurgaon, Belfast, and Dayton, Ohio competing for a growing share of legal work that needn’t be performed in law firms’ urban headquarters. Here’s a preview of what might […]
Control or Consensus
Every law firm starts life with a flurry of entrepreneurial adolescence and adulthood, the unmet demands of strategic and managerial decision making can cause the firm to plateau or even regress. Identifying the four phases of law firm development can be the key both to avoiding premature stagnation and to progressing toward institutional status. I […]
Low leverage: A low road to ruin for law firms?
A truly worrisome trend is spreading from American law firms throughout the world: institutionalized low leverage. Many partners welcome the higher profits and managerial relief this trend produces. But in the longer term, this short-sighted policy threatens serious damage to firms, clients, and partners themselves. Lawyers in other countries carefully monitor the U.S. legal market, […]
Staying power: A legal project management update
Legal project management has been an unqualified success for many major law firms that have adopted it — but only because they have supported it from the top, built programs from the ground up, and stayed relentlessly focused on practical, real-world, lawyer-first training. Here are LPM success stories from across the United States. Yes, but […]
The next generation of legal project managers
The apprenticeship model for training new lawyers simply isn’t adequate for legal project management skills, with potential competitive losses for law firms that retain the old model. Here’s a better blueprint for LPM training within your firm. Law firms are waking up to client demands for more efficiency and value for money in managing matters. […]
Creating a “Communication Engine” through Legal Project Management
Communication lapses are far more than simple misunderstandings or irritations: in the highly complex world of the modern legal transaction, they can derail a major project and fatally damage the lawyer-client relationship. Legal project management practices and principles can revolutionize the way lawyers and clients talk to each other and among themselves. As communicators, most […]
What reputation really means (Hint: It’s not brand)
Law firms rise and fall on their reputation, both among clients and competitors. But what do we really mean by “reputation,” and how is it measured? Edge International’s exclusive Reputational Index points the way towards the answers, and warns that the world’s leading law firms are raising the reputational stakes for everyone. It seems that […]
Don’t touch that compensation system (yet)!
Law firms struggling with partner compensation — which is to say, almost all firms — often blame the compensation system. But more often than not, the problem lies with the ways in which the compensation process plays out, including expectations of partner behavior and the communication of the process by which a figure is reached. […]
7 business development tactics in a down economy
The global economy is in rough shape and will get worse before it gets better. That means law firms must sharpen their business development efforts if they hope to improve profitability over the next 12 to 24 months. Here are seven ways in which your firm can increase its chances for major business victories. At […]
Managing the self-limiting lawyer: New perspectives on professional development
Perfectionist lawyers who crave unblemished success and endless positive reinforcement are likely never to reach their full potential and are at serious risk of burnout and loss. Law firm and law department leaders owe these lawyers and their organizations solutions to their self-limiting behavior. Productivity is on the minds of legal leaders and managers these […]