An article based on Muir's blog entry "What do Women Want? Challenging the Diversity Myth" has been published in the ABA's April 2010 webzine Law Practice Today. The issue focuses on effective diversity strategies in law practice management.
From 2:00 pm to 3:15 EST on Thursday April 29, 2010 Muir will lead an audio conference discussion hosted by the Center for Ccompetitive Management (CCM) entitled "Lateral Partner Hires: Selecting and Integrating the Best Fit for the Firm," centering on the issues associated with hiring and integrating lateral partners. A record number of lateral partner moves were made in 2009 and 2010 is shaping up to be another record year. Don't miss this chance to maximize your firm's efforts to grow while avoiding the expensive pitfalls of lateral partner attrition.
For further information and to register, go to http://www.c4cm.com/lawfirm/lateral-partner-hires.htm.
Muir will be a panelist at the Women Lawyers Alliance's (WLA) Inaugural Spring 2010 Conference: Rainmaking Equals Influence to be held May 13 and 14, 2010 at the Wyndham Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. The conference is designed to help women achieve their full potential and will focus on equipping them with the skills to help them reach their individual rainmaking goals.
Muir will participate in the panel entitled "Is It All in My Head?" with two other experts discussing how gender and gender differences affect women and their aptitude for developing business and becoming successful leaders in their firms.
For more information, visit WLA’s website at http://www.wlalliance.org/conference.html.
From Mitt Regan, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center: "I’m using your piece on 'What the New Law Firm Looks Like' for the Law Firms course that I will be teaching at Harvard Law School this spring. It does the best job I’ve seen of succinctly describing in one place the various trends that are likely to be transforming law firm practice."
So reassuring to see your offspring make it to Harvard!
You too can have the benefit of Ivy League-worthy insight. Now is the time to arrange for your managing partner, executive committee, general counsel or partnership to dialogue with Ronda Muir on what the new law firm looks like and where on that continuum your firm is headed.
My sincere thanks to all of you who subscribe to LawPeopleBlog. I hope you have found useful information here this past year. May we prosper from the challenges that the new year brings and remember to be grateful for those opportunities. Healthy and happy holidays!
Muir has been selected by Patrick McKenna (co-author of First Among Equals and Herding Cats) as one of a select group of law firm consultants available to advise law firm leaders under McKenna's ENABLE program--Executive Network of Advisory Boards for Leadership Excellence, which McKenna describes below.
"Now, more than ever, being a Firm Chair or Managing Partner and leading a professional service firm is a monumental task. Even more critical, how do you handle sensitive or strategic challenges when your previous experience has not adequately prepared you?
Corporate CEO’s who have used Advisory Boards rate them as "very effective" as sounding boards and sources of management mentoring. They also give these boards high ratings for offering ideas, influencing strategy, sharing business contacts, and providing business or industry intelligence.
The primary challenge to making Advisory Boards work for professional service firm leaders lies in recruiting and assembling a group of talented confidants willing to serve on these boards and then having an experienced resource available to help firm leaders get their Advisory Boards up-and-running effectively. The ENABLE program is dedicated to those two objectives."
For additional information, contact Muir at RMuir@RobinRolfeResources or McKenna at patrick@patrickmckenna.com.
The IOMA Law Firm Leadership Alert on November 19, 2009 calls Ronda Muir this month's Thought Leader, saying she "...presents as cogent an expression of what the future of law firms and law practice will look like as we have yet found." Her article is published in the December issue of the IOMA Partner's Report - a Monthly Brief for Law Firm Owners and will be the featured cover-page article in December's Compensation & Benefits for Law Offices newsletter.
Our host's email notification server has been down for several days and is only now operational, so you have not received notices of blog entries posted during that time. Rather than flood your inbox with notications, please browse the blog at your leisure to catch up on the latest entries--The Importance of Glue, Throwing out Consultants' Reports, and The People Factor Inherent in the Coming Reinvention.
We apologize for the absence of email notifications to you of new blog entries. The central notification server has been down for several days and is frantically being rebuilt by the blog host. Entries will be emailed to you once the server is up again.
We apologize for the absence of email notifications of new blog entries. The central notification server has been down for several days and is frantically being rebuilt by the blog host. Entries will be emailed to you once the server is up again.
Muir led an inter-active limited-attendance roundtable on Law Practice Management for Current and Prospective Law Firm Leaders at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Association of Patent Law Firms (APLF) in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, September 17, 2009. Topics discussed included the distinction between managers and leaders, the importance of values-driven firm identity, the role of practice group leaders in moving the firm forward, and transitioning from consensus-led management to more executive approaches.
Muir is leading an inter-active limited-attendance roundtable on Law Practice Management for Current and Prospective Law Firm Leaders at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Association of Patent Law Firms (APLF) in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, September 17, 2009. For more information or to register, go to http://www.aplf.org.
Muir led a two and a half day retreat at the end of May for UNICEF's Macedonia office to help improve teamwork, communication and conflict resolution. Through the use of individual and team MBTI reports and emotional intelligence assessments, Muir and the team identified personal and office strengths and challenges and determined strategies for improved communication and conflict management in order to better serve the country's children.
Ronda Muir is participating in an audio conference on Thursday, June 11, at 2pm presented by CCM on the topic of Retooling Associate Pay: Key Strategies to Adapt to the New Economy. To register, go to http://www.c4cm.com/lawfirm/associatecompensation.htm.
Ronda Muir will participate as a panelist and breakout leader in the Jonathan R. Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia. The topic of the conference is "Building a Strong Enterprise: Critical Skills for Successful Entrepreneurs."
Keynote speaker Richard Teerlink led Harley-Davidson's fabled turnaround, fueled in part by his belief that people are the most important resource in any company. Muir will address "Developing High Performance Teams: understanding the dynamics and characteristics of high performance teams and the critical success factors needed to take teams from forming to performing status."
On February 18, 2009 Muir will lecture students at Northwestern University's Business Institutions Program on how to improve management decision-making. Based in part on the article "Promoting an Effective Board or Management Group," the discussion will explore, among other subjects, optimal personality traits for good decision-making, constructing effective teams and avoiding extreme decisions.
My sincere thanks to all of you who subscribe to LawPeopleBlog. I hope you have found useful information here this past year.
My wish for you is to have gratitude for all of the good in your professional and personal life (see Robert A. Emmons, Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Houghton Mifflin 2007), and the resolve to change what should and could be better.
What do you know? Narcissists--big personalities with big egos who like to exert control and reject collaborative decision-making--are the ones leading many law firms through these perilous times.
"Narcissistic leaders are distinguished by their big ideas...and general indifference to the opinions of others,” according to Douglas Richardson of Altman Weil. “They resolutely reject the status quo, thus affronting all those tied to tradition and cautious about change. They want to reshape the world to their vision. They don’t much care if others label them vain and self-centered; they count on the power of their vision and their personal charisma to drive them to the top during periods of great upheaval or change. Their style is at best despotic, and often coercive.”
Such leaders tend to be nonreflective and poorly attuned to the needs of differing individuals, Richardson writes. The results are high lateral partner movement and high attrition among younger lawyers for whom money and status are not primary motivators.
Richardson says such leaders may display genius and vision, but they are at their best when they know their limits—or when someone can point them out. He suggests hiring an outside coach “with plenty of candor, a tough skin and a strong mandate from the firm to help with top team-building.”
Ronda Muir is participating as a panelist in CMM's audio conference on "Revenue Per Lawyers: Increase Profitability not Billable Hours" being held at 2pm on Wednesday, October 29, 2008. To register, please go to www.c4cm.com/lawfirm/lawyerrev.htm.
Muir participated on September 12 in an audio conference for CMM (Center for Competitive Management) on the topic of Associate Compensation: Weighing Current Market Trends & Alternatives.
The American Bar Association has announced that Ronda Muir's cover article in the July/August 2007 issue of Law Practice magazine, entitled "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Law Firm Partners," has been awarded the 2007-2008 Law Practice Magazine Edge Award for Bronze Feature Article.
The Edge Awards are sponsored by Edge International, and each year the awards recognize excellence in writing for the magazine.
Muir will be presented with the award at the Tucson, Arizona October 16-18, 2008 meeting of the Law Practice Management section.
On Wednesday, March 12, 2-3:15 pm EST, Muir will be conducting an audioconference for the Center for Competitive Management on Associate Compensation: Remain Competitive Without Breaking the Bank. Included in the discussion will be a review of current trends and out-of-the-box ideas for dealing with the impact of escalating associate compensation, how to find the best strategy for your own law firm and overcoming the problems and pitfalls in making that strategy work.
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On Thursday, September 21, at 2:00 pm EST, Ronda Muir will lead an audio conference on Associate Compensation: Where Do We Go From Here? Included in the discussion will be a review of current trends and out-of-the-box ideas for dealing with the impact of escalating associate compensation, how to find the best strategy for your own law firm and overcoming the problems and pitfalls in making that strategy work.
The audio conference is sponsored by IOMA, which publishes Law Office Management & Administration Report, as well as other legal publications, and provides research, educational and training products to lawyers. To register, go to www.ioma.com/law_firm_management/.
Ronda Muir's article "The Looming Associate Crisis" leads the July 2007 ALM Law Firm Partnership & Benefits Report, Volume 13, Number 6.
After reviewing statistics that show an ever-tightening supply, and potentially less qualified pool, of associates who are paid more yet leaving earlier than in years past, Muir recounts some of the tried (and perhaps less currently true) strategies for coping, and also identifies some more radical solutions that innovative, forward-looking firms can benefit from.
Ronda Muir will be making a presentation on managing the people risks that arise in law firms at a conference for Managing Partners in Chicago on Thursday, June 21. Sponsored by ARK Group, the conference, entitled “Developing a Risk Conscious Culture in Your Firm,” explores the relationship and interdependence of ethics, risk management and legal compliance.
Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, led a two and a half day retreat at the end of May for UNICEF's 22-person Armenia office to help them better serve the country's children. She was engaged to improve teamwork, communication and conflict resolution and to assist in the office's preparation for upcoming reviews and its transitioning to potential structural and policy changes.
Through the use of individual and team MBTI work style reports, personal conflict style assessments, emotional intelligence tests and a confidential office-wide survey, Muir assisted the team in identifying personal and office strengths and challenges and in determining strategies for improved communication, conflict management and change management.
In connection with the 129th annual International Tradmark Association meeting in Chicago, Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, presented a program on Wednesday, May 2, at Robin Rolfe Resource's Women's Power Breakfast for seventy senior corporate and law firm women in intellectual property. Her presentation focused on what makes lawyers, and women lawyers, different from other professions and how to use those differences to make good lawyers better. This year INTA welcomed over 8,500 registrants from around the world.
See Muir's article for guidelines on making your law practice (and life) more innovative, creative and collegial.
JOIN OUR STUDY As part of our ongoing study of the correlation between excellence in lawyering and emotional intelligence, we invite those of you listed in The Best Lawyers in America to take the MSCEIT, a 40-minute, confidential, on-line emotional intelligence assessment. Find out how you measure up with respect to this important attribute at our expense. In recognition of your participation, we will provide you with individual feedback, a written report, and the opportunity to have your firm identified as high-performing. See our blog entry entitled "Emotional Intelligence and Excellence in Lawyering" dated December 20, 2006 for a review of some of the study results to date.
NEW WEBSITE Visit our new website www.robinrolferesources.com for information on our services in legal organization dynamics, as well as other areas critical to law firm and law department management.
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Muir's "The Diversity Myth" Published
An article based on Muir's blog entry "What do Women Want? Challenging the Diversity Myth" has been published in the ABA's April 2010 webzine Law Practice Today. The issue focuses on effective diversity strategies in law practice management.
