Coming not long after the disappointment of NOT announcing at their partners meeting in Hong Kong this past March the anticipated merger of King & Wood Mallesons with WongPartnership, KWM is now expected to vote on a merger with SJ Berwin, a UK firm established by Stanley J Berwin in 1982. The effective date is speculated to … Continue Reading
Our last post reported on Citibank’s first quarter financial analysis and noted that in spite of “alarmingly low” growth in demand currently, managing partners of mostly AmLaw 100 firms were exhibiting an unusual display of optimism: they expect overall demand for legal services to increase this year. A more nuanced snapshot of managing partner … Continue Reading
First quarter 2013 results obtained from 166 firms included an “alarming” drop in demand of 3.3% from the comparable quarter for 2012, according to Citibank’s Law Firm Group. Lower revenues this year had been anticipated because of last year’s push to capture revenue ahead of 2013′s tax increases. And revenues were in fact lower, just much … Continue Reading
Above the Law columnist Susan Moon, an in-house lawyer at Wyndham Worldwide, gave our The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers a nice plug last week, just hours after much of the data in it was discussed at a presentation at Yale Law School. An older article (since updated) and a "bit on the dry side," … Continue Reading
A question was posed recently in the press: – "Why are lawyers such terrible managers?" The article appeared in CNN’s online Money/Fortune magazine. It cites statistics from the National Association for Legal Professionals Foundation that in 2010 law firms with 100 and fewer lawyers and 251-500 attorneys lost nearly one fifth of their associates. This is after the … Continue Reading
Given our last entry, it is not surprising that law school applications have been going down dramatically over the last few years. With the high cost of law school, the paucity of jobs (only half the number of jobs as there are law school graduates) and the dimming career and earnings prospects for lawyers who do get law jobs, young … Continue Reading
A while back we considered in a couple of entries the issue of eroding ethics in the legal arena: What’s Ethics Got to Do With It? Part 1 and What’s Ethics Got to Do With It? Part 2. Apart from the regretful plunge in ethical behavior, another consequence of the well-documented and increasingly evident problem of lawyers failing to perform professionally … Continue Reading
There aren’t many developments in the legal industry that literally bowl you over–okay, the demise of Dewey & LeBoeuf was a fast-paced shocker. Hearing over the last few months questions about the future viability of one or another well-respected law school has been another. Let’s review the bidding in that part of the legal field: Unprepared to Practice. There … Continue Reading
Here is the third and final installment on some of the highlights from this year’s Futures Conference of the College of Law Practice Management held at Georgetown Law School at the end of last month: What General Counsel Want From Their Outside Law Firms The panel’s top considerations reflected the same ones outlined in the ACC’s GC Value Insights, prepared in cooperation with a number of … Continue Reading
The following is a second installment about some of the highlights from this year’s Futures Conference of the College of Law Practice Management held at Georgetown Law School the end of October: Hiring and Training Successful Lawyers Georgetown Law School reported on two research projects they are undertaking–“Integration and Fragmentation in the Modern Law Firm” and “Developing Attorneys … Continue Reading
The following are some of the highlights from this year’s Futures Conference of the College of Law Practice Management held at Georgetown Law School last week: New Model Law Firms New entrants into law firm alternative business models are Clearspire, which consists of 2 joined companies –one providing legal services to clients and the other providing … Continue Reading
Most of us have very high standards for the work we deliver our clients. We demand from ourselves and those on our team the best possible product. "Performance at whatever price" might be our mantra, even if it requires nagging and criticizing or even bullying. Yet confrontational environments feel uncomfortable to most people and over the long run are in fact not conducive … Continue Reading
"financial crisis"
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Citi’s Midyear Report on the state of the legal industry for the first 6 months of this year is a cautionary read, harrowingly notable for its brevity. "[W]e’re now concerned that this year the legal industry may be unable to match 2011′s low single-digit profit growth. There are three reasons for our concern: demand growth slowed during … Continue Reading
Recent reporting happened to recount within days of each other three instances of fraud in the legal world that bear some reflection. In New York in late July, after a short deliberation by the jury, two attorneys were convicted of 10 felony counts of perpetuating for over almost a decade mortgage fraud, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud … Continue Reading
While it’s unlikely that anyone would attribute all of Research in Motion’s troubles to corporate geography, it’s worth noting that RIM’s two chief executives, both now gone, were located over the last few critical years in offices about a 10-minute drive apart. And, according to former RIM executives, meetings with both of them present were rare. In the … Continue Reading
We’ve been quoting Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, for many years. Christensen once called large American law firms "the most profitable businesses in the world," while at the same time indicting them: "Speedier information-gathering capabilities allow large law firms to increase utilization of less experienced lawyers without passing cost savings on to their customers." … Continue Reading
Following up our most recent post, Ronda Muir had the opportunity to speak with Colin O’Keefe of LXBN on the trying times the legal industry is currently facing. In this short interview, she explains some of the more telling numbers, what might be behind them and what the legal industry must do to adapt. … Continue Reading
Here is the latest on the financial state of the US legal industry. Citibank reported last month that during the first quarter of 2012, demand for legal services grew a paltry 1.5%, although at least reversing the decline in the 2011 fourth quarter. But expense growth of 5.9% outpaced the meager revenue growth (1.2%) even more than in 2011–a rise … Continue Reading
Ronda Muir of Law People Management LLC, Randall Kiser of DecisionSet, and Daniel S. Bowling III of Duke Law School will be co-presenting a Center for Competitive Management audio presentation on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 2pm EDT entitled "Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence." The presentation will cover the relatively new science of emotional intelligence, its relationship to … Continue Reading
As another pundit among many slowing down to rubber neck the wreckage strewn from the Dewey & LeBoeuf crash, it’s hard to know where to start. The question that hovered on everyone’s minds since earlier in the year, as the media dissected every move there, was whether we were watching the disintegration, again, of a major law firm: one which … Continue Reading
Ronda Muir of Law People Management LLC, Randall Kiser of DecisionSet, and Daniel S. Bowling III of Duke Law School will be co-presenting a Center for Competitive Management audio presentation on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 2pm EDT entitled "Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence." The presentation will cover the relatively new science of emotional intelligence, its relationship to … Continue Reading
Speaking of the industry being "over-lawyered," one of the reasons that that conclusion is being reached is because of the impact of incoming new technologies, which are not even yet being fully felt in the industry–technologies that both raise the hope of more targeted and cost-efficient client service while at the same time spelling the demise of many back-office, data slogging, routinized legal jobs. The current … Continue Reading
In case anyone questions whether the legal industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation, you might consider some of these developments: The number of US law school applicants is down almost 25%, or over 200,000 applicants, over the last two years. Which might be in part because the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that over the next ten years only … Continue Reading
