Smart Growth Part 7: Organic Growth of Revenue

12.03.19 | Susan Duncan

In our prior post, Smart Growth Part 6: Organic Growth of Talent, we discussed the need for growing your talent organically as well as through lateral hiring of associates and partners.  Today, when leaders and consultants talk about organic growth, they often are referring to the revenue side of organic growth.  In a highly competitive environment…

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Smart Growth Part 4: Lateral Partner Hiring

10.16.19 | Susan Duncan

As we discussed in Smart Growth Part 1, hiring lateral partners or small groups of partners and associates provides law firms with short and long-term opportunities to add partners with strong client relationships and portable books of business to shore up their revenue numbers.   Whether adding well-known and positioned rainmakers to a practice or industry…

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Innovation Case Study 1: Levenfeld Pearlstein

07.10.19 | Susan Duncan

Levenfeld Pearlstein is a 75-lawyer firm in Chicago. Its innovative CEO, Angie Hickey, recently shared her insights at the P3 Conference about how the firm has adopted a corporate style Customer Experience culture that sets it apart.  Their client focus permeates everything the firm does both internally and externally. The firm was founded in 1999…

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Practice Groups Part 4: Practice Group Leader as Talent Manager and Coach

01.09.19 | Susan Duncan

Perhaps one of the most challenging responsibilities for today’s practice group leaders is the “people” side of the business. In our prior two posts, we have discussed the Practice Group Leader as Strategist and the Practice Group Leader as Financial Steward. While PGLs often get help from others managing the associates and staff in the…

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Change Management 2: Strong Leadership and Collaboration are Required to Drive Change

10.24.18 | Susan Duncan

Making meaningful and sustainable change will require collaboration and strong leadership. As discussed in Change Management Part 1, effectuating change in law firms is more difficult than other professions and industries and managing partners cite the reluctance or refusal of the vast majority of their partners to change.  Given the dynamic shifts occurring in the…

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Succession Management Pillar 3 of 5: Client Succession and Transition Management

08.22.18 | Susan Duncan

This post follows two prior posts and addresses the third pillar of succession management. Like many aspects of law firm management, the subject of succession planning often is limited to internal firm or management discussions and consideration.  This is a mistake. Clients know and worry that senior partners may be nearing retirement, and absent any…

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Succession Management Pillar 2 of 5: Revenue, Finance and Compensation

08.08.18 | Susan Duncan

Much of the Baby Boomer/retirement/succession dilemma revolves around money: the firm’s revenues, senior partner’s contribution to and control of client revenue, partner compensation and incentives to transition and other financial aspects of retiring partners.As noted in our recent post: Succession Management: The Problem and a RoadMap, we know that according to Altman Weil, 73% of…

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A Race to the Bottom for the AmLaw 200 and Below? Doesn’t Have to Be.

06.14.18 | Susan Duncan

A month ago, at a conference on change management, a managing partner of an AmLaw 200 firm asked a question that likely weighs on the minds of most AmLaw 200 managing partners, some of the AmLaw 100 firms and many of those below the top 200. His question was: We hear all the time that…

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Women: Communicate So You are Heard

12.06.17 | Susan Duncan

All of the research on gender bias and communications indicates that there are significant differences in the way men and women communicate. Men often are direct, women indirect.  For men, communication helps achieve a goal, provides an answer; for women, it is more of a process, they want to tell a story and make a…

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Collaboration: Walking the Talk at Morgan Lewis

03.29.17 | Susan Duncan

[Note: This article is being published with the permission of our client, Morgan Lewis & Bockius.] Two of our previous posts on collaboration, True Collaboration Drives Profitability and Collaboration: The Next Law Firm Frontier, discussed the benefits of collaborative cultures and approaches to client representation.   But both articles also alluded to the reasons why collaboration…

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Gender Bias and the Compensation Gap

09.15.13 | Susan Duncan

Our last post Why Aren’t There More Women Leaders and Why Should Firms Care? addressed many of the reasons that women are not advancing to top levels in their firms.  Many of the impediments and biases we summarized also can be found in the discrepancies between male and female compensation for equity partners. According to “Closing the Gap,” a…

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“Effective Client-Adviser Relationships 2012” Part 1: Role of Management

10.01.12 | Susan Duncan

This post is one of four that discusses the findings of a survey conducted jointly by the Financial Times (FT), the Managing Partners’ Forum’ (MPF) and Meridian West. The survey results were pre-viewed at a one day conference hosted by PM Forum in London on September 27. The posts reflect findings from the survey, sessions…

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Can BigLaw Accommodate the Needs of Women?

08.07.12 | Susan Duncan

A growing number of women are placing a higher priority on having a high paying career than they did fifteen years ago. According to a Pew Research Study, while women have surpassed men in education achievement since 1999, 66% of women between the age of 18 and 34 now cite a high-paying career as high priority…

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What Rainmaker Traits and Skills are Required for Success?

07.31.12 | Susan Duncan

For so many years, the term “rainmakers” has referred to partners in firms who bring in new clients and have “big books of business.”  Merriam-Webster defines a rainmaker as “A person (as a partner in a law firm) who brings in new business.”  Fifty years ago, many firms relied on only one or two or just…

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