Lawyer attrition is a reality of our industry. Unfortunately, so is a significant lateral hire failure rate. It doesn’t need to be. There are simply, effective ways to protect your investment. A 2013 American Lawyer/LexisNexis survey found that over 70% of respondents identified lateral hires as part of their talent management strategy over the coming [...]
The book, “How Will You Measure Your Life” by Clayton Christensen is filled with valuable life and business lessons. The one I’ll focus on today is the difference between deliberate and emergent strategies, and how they can ideally come into play in a firm. Christensen illustrates this point by summarizing Honda’s entry into the North [...]
How many times have you reflected back on a firm retreat and thought “wow, that was money well-spent”? I worry that we’ve become far too comfortable with the underwhelming performance of one of the most expensive management tools a firm will ever engage in. Most professional service firms have held a retreat before and are [...]
Last week I described four typical leadership scenarios that work against strong marketing ideas: leading blindly, leading cautiously, leading exclusively, and leading self-centrically. This week I’ll talk about how these situations can easily be addressed. My belief is that over time and through trial and error, firm leadership learns that profitability is best achieved by [...]
Law firms work hard at doing the right thing. We can see aspirations for this in their mission and value statements. We sometimes read about their innovative programs in legal journals. They seem to be focussed on treating their lawyers, staff and clients well. Then why is it that so few law firms end up [...]