A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. —Lao Tzu
Leading a law firm these days may be one of the great roller-coaster rides of modern management. Exhilarating, breathtaking, unexpected twists and turns, even moments of fear.
If SportsCenter had a sister station named LawCenter reporting on news in the legal profession, its Stuart Scott (what is lawyerese for Boo Yah!?) would report on the big lateral hires throughout the year and not, as is the case in the NBA, for a brief period after the end of the season. Unlike players
In recent years, law firm mergers have been on the uptick and do not seem to be abating. Big mergers reap a lot of publicity because the firms joining together often have household names. But as Catherine Ho reports, not all the law firm mergers involve the behemoths that grab the headlines. Ms. Ho’s
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born – that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. – Warren G. Bennis
There is simply no
Law firm succession planning is a lot different today than it was in years past, even just a few years ago. In addition to the issues covered previously on Succession Planning, difficulty arises from the fact that the interests of the people that make up a firm have never been less aligned. The lack
A customer is the most important visitor on our premises; he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor
For more than a few AmLaw 200 law firms, non-qualified retirement plans exist that are largely unfunded. Although “a good idea at the time” when established, the plans now can represent a significant burden. As James Cotterham wrote in his Retirement Basics for Law Firms a decade ago, the unfunded pension plans can be a
Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go. – Herman Hesse
This is the final post in a series examining law firm decline, inspired by the Jim Collins book, How the Mighty Fall. See the previous four post:
In a recent post about law firm succession planning, I observed
“Succession planning and execution in 2014 is far more difficult than it was a decade or more ago. It is not that it is harder today to identify credible candidates to succeed existing leadership; searching for the best talent is a task that has
If falling into desperation worked to make things better, then I would say, ‘Let’s all jump into despair.’ But it doesn’t help. The only way to truly find meaning and fulfillment is to look at the disaster, the pain, the difficulty, and know with complete certainty that good can come from this. – Yehuda Berg
