Value Post 4: How Law Firms and In-House Counsel Can Co-Create Value

05.06.13 | Susan Duncan

As we proposed in our previous post Value Post 3: Like Law Firms, GCs Must Deliver More Value to Their Clients, general counsel face many of the same pressures that their outside lawyers do when it comes to demonstrating their value to their clients – the business side of their companies. Much of the legal press…

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Value Post 3: Like Law Firms, GCs Must Deliver More Value to Their Clients

05.05.13 | Susan Duncan

Law firms have been so wrapped up in their own challenges that they often neglect to think about the fact that legal departments are also under substantial pressure to deliver value to the business. General Counsel may consider their outside lawyers a “necessary evil,” but many company executives and boards consider their in-house lawyers a…

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Value Post 2: Your Value Proposition Should be a Differentiator

04.15.13 | Susan Duncan

Our last post Value Post 1: What Does Value Mean in Law Firms? discussed the meaning of value in the law firm/client context including the ways that clients define and measure the value they receive from their lawyers. This second post explores how firms can articulate value to help them differentiate and excel in attracting, satisfying and…

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Value Post 1: What Does Value Mean in Law Firms?

| Susan Duncan

“Value” is one of the most commonly used buzzwords of the first part of this century. Everyone is talking about it, promoting it, writing about it, offering it, demanding it, trying to measure it and bragging about it. First, let’s start with the Merriam-Webster definition of value: 1: a fair return or equivalent in goods,…

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Will Law Schools Finally Make Changes the Profession Needs?

12.30.12 | Susan Duncan

2012 brought a great deal of attention to many challenges facing and created by our current legal education system. As recently as early December, Jordan Furlong weighed in with his post “How to kill (or save) a law school.” Brian Tamanaha’s extremely well-written and researched book “Failing Law Schools,” published in 2012, describes in great detail why the system…

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Culture Part 2: How to Use or Adapt Culture to Succeed in the “New Normal”

08.28.12 | Susan Duncan

Last week, our post entitled Culture Part 1: Does Law Firm Culture Play a Role in Success or Failure? discussed the components that comprise organizational culture. Every law firm has a unique set of interwoven values and characteristics that make up its culture. As firms address the substantial disruptions posed by the economy, technology and supply and…

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Culture Part 1: Does Law Firm Culture Play a Role in Success or Failure?

08.23.12 | Susan Duncan

You bet it does — perhaps now more than ever. Of course this depends on how you define “success.” With so much focus on the numbers – PPPs, RPL, revenues, de-equitizing, equity versus income partners, cutting expenses, discounts and billing rates, utilization, hours – it would be easy to assume that every corporate law firm…

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Does the Legal Profession Need Radical Change?

07.23.12 | Susan Duncan

In September, a group of high level leaders in the legal profession will convene in New York City to “solve the worst legal job market in 20 years.”   Those invited to the meeting by New York City Bar Association President Carey Dunne will be asked to identify the causes for these woes and to make recommendations to…

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