The Leadership Vector

The world tends toward continuums.  Hot and cold have warm and cool along the way.  Big and small have all manner of magnitude in the middle.  Even black and white have hues between.  Winter, spring, summer, and fall represent varying points along a gradual scale...

Leading the Business of Law Firms

More jokes have been told about lawyers than any other professionals. But the business of law firms is no joke. $250 billion a year in the US, and Washington gets more than its fair share of the bounty. For the last 50 years law firms have done astonishingly well....

The Law Firm Crisis: Changing Business Models

Law firms are big business, nationally and locally. In the United States, more than $250 billion a year is spent on legal services, and the Washington, D.C. region gets more than its fair share of that amount. The D.C. Bar has almost 50,000 active members, and around...

The New Normal

The market for legal services will never be the same. The ongoing recession decreases demand for services and general counsel spending and increases price pressures from competition and clients. The munificence of yesterday is gone. Layoffs, hiring and promotion...

Munificence in Misfortune: How Bad Times Make for Good Conduct

Conventional wisdom holds that during tough times—such as today’s feeble, disheartening economic climate—the lines between right and wrong blur.  Reliably decent people, whether on the street or in the boardroom, find the compromising conditions in which they live...