Can you remember a time when there was so much talk of more BigLaw firm failures? I can’t.
Count yourself a believer or a sceptic (and there are hard core advocates on both sides, including gleeful cheerleaders in the first camp and diehard deniers in the second camp), this is a new phenomenon on our landscape. Continue reading “Guest Post: Three Leading Indicators of Failure”
Loyal readers of Adam Smith, Esq. know that we think there’s much that can be learned for Law Land from other industries.
Today’s column is in that vein, and our texts for today come from The New York Times and Above the Law.
Continue reading “Guest post: Lessons in recruitment from Google”
At Friday’s ‘Grayling Day’ demonstration in London, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association Nigel Lithman QC told the audience that ‘an indispensable part of our democracy is the criminal justice system. It’s taken centuries to build; it is taking this government a blink of an eye to demolish.’
‘Cooperation, cooperation, cooperation’ is the Serious Fraud Office (SFO)’s message to corporates looking to enter into new US-style plea bargains available [this week].
From [today, 24 February] the Americanisation of corporate crime in England continues.
Businesses (but not individuals) will be able to enter into Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) with the UK taking a leaf out of the US book as it moves to plea bargains for corporates.
Third-party funding (TPF) has suddenly become the black sheep of the litigation finance industry. In the wake of the spectacularly unsuccessful TPF-backed Excalibur Ventures case – a huge piece of litigation that Lord Justice Christopher Clarke described in December as “speculative and opportunistic” – questions are now being asked about what the problems that are emerging with some of the funding in that litigation mean for the rest of the industry. Continue reading “Guest Post: Third party funders, out of the shadows”
Winning a new client for the firm—there’s little that can match that for excitement, sense of accomplishment and visible contribution to the firm. More so if the client is big or prestigious. A pitch is often a hard-fought battle against many worthy foes. There are numerable, maddening unknowns in pitching a new client: which lawyers at which levels should be presented? What’s the optimal pricing? What services will distinguish your firm from the others? etc., etc. Continue reading “Guest post – Client retention: give credit where credit’s due”
There’s an interesting tension between Sir Nigel Knowles prediction of legal behemoths straddling the globe with investment bankers outriders (or is it the other way round) whilst the remainder squabble over the scraps, downsize or fail (I may have sexed it up a bit, which it does not need; it’s a very interesting piece) and Jordan Furlong’s New World of Legal Work (a supercharged, short Susskind-esque parlez with the world of legal work in 2020 where firms are expected to be smaller). It too is an excellent read.
Let me pick up some of Jordan’s key points: Continue reading “Guest post: The New World of Legal Work vs Global Behemoths”
We are now a little over two years since the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) began accepting applications from would-be alternative business structures (ABSs), and a little under two years since it issued the first licences. I have a sense that some are disappointed and a little underwhelmed by what has happened since then.
In the main they shouldn’t be – the transient nature of news, has made people forget just how many interesting and different legal services providers have emerged in the last two years. But from one perspective, and I will come back to this later, I can see their point. Continue reading “Guest comment: That legal big bang – still waiting for the Dyson moment”
It’s been viewed online nearly seven million times. Sheryl Sandberg calls it one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley. And it was created by the company whose stock increased in 2013 more than any other’s in the S&P 500—up nearly 350%.
“It” is a 126-slide PowerPoint called ‘Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility,’ and it outlines Netflix’s approach to just that—culture—although it has primarily been interpreted as a ‘reinvention” of HR,’ as this Harvard Business Review article puts it.
Going through the entire PowerPoint (I have) is valuable in and of itself; if nothing else, you’ll see how very well done PowerPoints can be, for a change. But the HBR article, written by the former head of HR at Netflix itself, distills their approach to talent into five tenets based on two key insights into how people actually feel about performing their jobs.
Turnabout.
I recently wrote about how to demoralize, discourage, and disenchant top talent. This is about how to retain that talent. Like the prior column, this one is based on one of the top columns of the year from Strategy + Business, the Booz & Co. publication: ‘Retaining Top Talent: Yes, It Really Is All About Them.’
Prefatory clarification: What follows isn’t addressed to your inner circle of key leaders, or to the Super Rainmakers, all of whom you presumably know intimately, and with whom you talk about what follows all the time, in ways tailored to each individual. Rather, what follows is addressed to how you deal with all the talent that’s not at the tippy-top of your firm already. Continue reading “Guest post: See Talent. Feed It.”
