Category: General musings
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What’s the end game?
I was with a group of law firm partners from different City firms this week, listening to them discuss a case study about super-profitable US law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Aside from their phenomenally successful business model and profitability (with the Amlaw100 reporting profit per partner of over $4m), one of the points…
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The Joy Of Secs (secondments)
I’ve been hanging out with a lot of in-house counsel recently, and one thing’s clear. They love their secondees. Really love them. Whether it’s a GC who is relying on a specialist skill set that he or she can’t quite find the budget to recruit, a mid-level corporate counsel who is working with a junior…
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Why sorry is the hardest word
I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague yesterday around a workshop he was facilitating for a fairly sizeable group of lawyers. As part of the discussion he asked the question “how many of you have ever been the subject of a client complaint”. Our subsequent discussion centred around the fact that the solitary…
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How to find an extra 1,000 hours a year
I have a confession to make. I’m an information junkie. All my life I’ve been a voracious consumer of books, magazines and newspapers. From burying my nose in novels as a child, through reading 3-4 books a week when commuting as a lawyer, to teaching myself to speed-read early in my legal career to keep…
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Lawyers – Just. Do. Something.
It seems like there was some sort of psychic alignment in the UK legal blogging community last week. As the news came rolling in on changes facing the UK market (Neil Rose’s site Legal Futures is often a good place to start), the Entrepreneur Lawyer Chrissie Lightfoot wrote a great post about the disruption and fear…
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Lawyers – ask why they buy, not why they didn’t
Have you ever thought about the reason people choose to buy legal services from a particular firm? Sure, if you’re a lawyer in practice (or a business development professional at a law firm) you may have spent some time debriefing why you lost a tender, but have you actually talked to some clients to find…
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Super Mario Lawyer – How to gamify a legal career
There’s a lot of buzz at the moment about “gamification”. Now before you choke on your cornflakes and wonder what anything that has the word “game” in it has to do with a serious business like the law, let me first explain what it is. The best definition I found was in a white paper…
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The in-house law firm – the future of corporate law departments?
I’m a big fan of Tom Peters. Not just because he genuinely interacts with his followers on Twitter, not just because he’s passionate about what he writes about, and not just because he presents (presentations, books) in some pretty cool ways. I’m a fan because he has some great ideas. If you look back to his book…
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The Tao Of Law Firm Strategy
Differentiation is getting harder for law firms. We all know that. Clients constantly state that they want their lawyers to have deeper knowledge of their business and environment. As the market changes, more and more firms are re-examining their business model and questioning how they are going to compete and win in the future. Some…
Intelligent Challenge 