Let Us Help You Reach Your New Year’s Goals

01.08.20 | Susan Duncan

Happy New Year! While most reports from Q4 indicate that 2019 was a robust year for law firms, others are cautioning that we are still due for a slowdown in 2020.  Now is the time to hone your growth strategies, safely secure your clients and your own talent, and proactively manage into the future.  We…

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Smart Growth Part 1: The Why and How of Growth

09.04.19 | Susan Duncan

As we enter the fourth quarter of the year, it is an important time to be thinking about your firm’s growth strategy for the future. Law firms, like any other business, must grow and adapt to stay relevant and viable. The last ten years of disruption have increased (1) competition from other law firms, clients’…

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Innovation Case Study 4: Morgan Lewis & Bockius

08.21.19 | Susan Duncan

Our prior three law firm case studies have featured a 75-lawyer firm in Chicago, a 550-lawyer US firm and a 1,100-lawyer firm all based in the United States except for 13 full-time lawyers in China. This case study is about global law firm Morgan Lewis, with more than 2,000 lawyers across 17 offices in the…

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Innovation in Law Firm Operations: Takeaways from LMA’s P3 Conference

06.26.19 | Susan Duncan

Nearly four hundred professionals gathered for the 7th annual P3: Practice Innovation Conference focusing on project management, process improvement and pricing and hosted by the Legal Marketing Association.  It was an impressive group of experts and very instructive to see how law firms continue to expand their commitment to legal operations and innovation in their…

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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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Practice Groups Part 1: The Framework and Leadership Role

11.07.18 | Susan Duncan

Most law firms have implemented a  practice group structure. Even those firms that retain the traditional, larger umbrella department structure (for example, corporate/transactional, litigation/disputes, regulatory,) most break down the management of the practice into smaller strategic business units that are used to: Organize lawyers and manage talent with specific skills and specialties Develop, execute and monitor…

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Change Management Part 1: The Framework

10.10.18 | Susan Duncan

The instability, disruption and resulting anxiety in the legal profession at times feels like a roller coaster: ups and downs, twists and turns, peaks and valleys, fast and slow, feelings of risk, exposure and vulnerability and a lack of control over our destiny. We are more or less along for the ride, which admittedly is…

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Succession Management Pillar 5 of 5: Senior Lawyer Transitions and Next Career Support

09.26.18 | Susan Duncan

In this final post in our five-part series on succession planning, we address perhaps the most challenging aspect of the topic: managing and supporting individual senior partner transitions.  In Pillar 1, Pillar 2, Pillar 3 and Pillar 4 we discussed various components of how firms can design and manage approaches to the many facets of succession…

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Succession Management Pillar 4 of 5: Leadership Succession and Knowledge Transitions

09.12.18 | Susan Duncan

There are many complex issues related to succession. We have reviewed many of these already in our previous three posts which can be found here, here and here. In this fourth pillar, we will address two important areas that pose particular risk for law firms in two key areas: leadership transitions and loss of knowledge.Loss of…

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Succession Management Pillar 1 of 5: Transition Management and Retirement Process

07.25.18 | Susan Duncan

In our recent blog post Succession Planning: The Problem and a RoadMap, we concluded with a RoadMap for how to establish a framework for an approach to succession planning.  This post provides additional detail about five components that comprise the pillars of succession management. Pillar 1 ComponentsDone correctly, as described in our post The Succession…

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Do Your Law Firm Leaders Lead or Manage?

10.26.16 | Susan Duncan

Leadership is not a title or a position. The best leaders have developed competencies that enable them to drive their firms forward, think conceptually and strategically and effectively build and rely on teams and networks. According to the 2016 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, eighty-nine percent of companies see leadership as an important or…

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Part 1 of 3: The Next Normal – Will the Traditional Law Firm Model Survive?

06.16.14 | Susan Duncan

This article is the first in a series to look at the “Next Normal” for law firms. Part 1 focuses on the traditional law firm model and why it is unlikely to remain as it is, Part 2 focuses on lawyer skills and talent management in the future, and Part 3 will address whether and…

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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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Succession Part 2: Transitioning to Tomorrow’s Leaders

08.06.13 | Susan Duncan

As noted in our previous post Succession Part 1: Holding onto Clients When Senior Rainmakers Retire, over the next ten years over 65% of baby-boomer, equity partners are expected to retire. (Since we focused on Transitioning Clients in that post, we will not address it again in this one.) Many of these partners likely also are…

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The Future is Here: 10 Trends and What Your Firm Should be Asking Itself

07.11.13 | Susan Duncan

Two things are clear right now. First, dramatic changes have already occurred and will continue to occur in the legal profession (actually, most are affecting all sectors of the economy.) Second, these and other new changes will be permanent, i.e., this is not a pendulum swing that will swing back. The marketplace is driving these…

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