Remaking news of the week: Equity profit-sharing

Today’s Remaking the news of the week post is on the old chestnut and increasingly thorny topic of equity profit-sharing.

Read More
Posted by on May 24, 2018 in BigLaw firms, Remaking News of the Week | 0 comments

Why the economics of free agency should worry partners

Some years ago, during a conference of BigLaw leaders in Chicago, I came to understand why the economics of free agency should worry partners in BigLaw firms. Until then I had not paid full attention to the free agent phenomenon.

David Parnell opens his book on The Failing Law Firm with an exposition of the adverse impact of free agents on that American religion, baseball. With David Goener, I updated the analysis of why law firms fail in this October 2017 post.

Read More
Posted by on May 22, 2018 in BigLaw firms | 0 comments

Remaking news of the week: London law firm incuabtors

Remaking the news of the week is a new feature on Dialogue. Each week I will write circa 100 words why the chosen item is, in my opinion, newsworthy in a Remaking Law Firms context.

Appropriately Remaking the news of the week kicks off citing Bob Ambrogi‘s report in Above the Law on three BigLaw firms that are variously pioneering and supporting lawtech startups.

Read More
Posted by on May 17, 2018 in BigLaw firms, Remaking News of the Week | 0 comments

From our new contributor, Jae Um: The Empire Strikes Back

With a fresh emoji-backed approach, Jae Um makes her first contribution to Dialogue, The Empire Strikes Back 💥and 2017 Is (Mostly) a 🎉Win 🎉for Am Law 100. Jae says of herself, “I’m generally on a mission to make things make sense and also sparkle. My current tour of duty is data + design to inform strategy in legal markets“. Welcome Jae.

Read More
Posted by on May 15, 2018 in BigLaw firms | 0 comments

Small firms: Take your size and own it

At the end of March, George Beaton posted an article in his Remaking Law Firms blog entitled ‘Mid-market law firm brouhaha’ in which he challenges the automatic attribution of law firm woes outside the BigLaw firmament. George references my previous article on ‘The Strength of Small Law Firms’ and advocates for a move away from the “small equals struggling” narrative. “To my knowledge”, he says, “there isn’t a skerrick of systematic evidence that all/most clients of these mid-market firms are saying “It’s desirable that your services are delivered by you in a firm with a bigger/international footprint/greater scale/wider range of services”.

Beaton argues that the “small-equals-struggling” narrative attributes certain challenges to the mid-market, which are, in fact, challenges faced by all law firms. In this scenario, he argues, it’s not the size of the firm that matters but the way it delivers its services.

Read More
Posted by on May 8, 2018 in Clients, Small law firms | 1 comment