Everyday, when I am paying attention, the world is nudging me to let go of something wrong and unhelpful. A friend of mine calls it “dropping the rock.” The rock is an assumption about how the world operates that can’t be reconciled with an honest evaluation of facts and experience.
Continue Reading Dropping the Rock: three examples (112)
Media attention shifts rapidly from law firm profitability to gender bias and from technology to new lateral partners. Yet, if we pull back to conduct a deeper analysis, what we observe is a law firm sector grappling with three interrelated threats that are seldom the focus of sustained attention: insufficient leadership, attorneys’ lack of meaning and purpose in their work, and client service. As shown in the above graphic, these three domains are the linchpins of law firm performance and sustainability.
Continue Reading Law firm leadership (111)
The graphic above shows two decades of increasing AmLaw firm competition across 10 legal markets. The dramatic across-the-board rise presents a puzzle: What’s driving the expansion?
Continue Reading Increasing competition (105)
Since graduating from law school in 2015, I’ve spent a lot of time in the room where it happens. I’ve served in leadership roles on local, state, and national bar associations; I’ve traveled around the country speaking with lawyers and law students of all sorts; and I’ve helped the sausage get made.
Continue Reading What is going with the Washington State Bar? One (young) lawyer’s perspective (101)
The U.S. legal profession is suffering from an enormous leadership vacuum. As a collective group, the lawyers with the most stature and gravitas — law school deans, managing partners of prestigious firms, GC of major companies, state and federal judges — are failing to step up, largely because each has a day job that is all consuming. As a result, profits per partner climb, in-house lawyers get their bonus, law schools hang onto their US News ranking, and the courts make it through another challenging fiscal year. But collectively, we have very few establishment leaders exhorting us to evolve in the public interest. That’s a vacuum.
Continue Reading Leadership, current and future (100)
As a sixth grader at Ridgebury Elementary, I completed my math and language homework using a workbook. In junior high, I moved on to textbooks, anthologies, and primary sources. Now, nearly 40 years later, I find myself returning to a workbook to learn leadership, an elusive skill set for many in the professional class.
Continue Reading Choosing Leadership: A Workbook (097)
In Part I (094) of this two-part series, we noted that within the broader economy, Glassdoor ratings are associated with strong organizational performance, such as higher sales, greater profits, and superior market returns. We
How many readers find value from ratings and reviews on Yelp, Angie’s List, Consumer Reports, Healthgrades, Trip Advisor, Amazon and Ebay?
Continue Reading Workplace transparency, Part I: Is it time to take Glassdoor seriously? (094)
On the outside chance that the afterlife involves a meeting with St. Peter at the Pearly gates, those working for the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois (LTF) will have good story to tell.
I came to law from engineering. My previous training and trade create an outsider’s inside perspective on how we solve problems with the practice of