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…

Read More

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…

Read More

Accelerate Your Personal Success: Executive Presence

02.20.19 | Susan Duncan

Executive presence is comprised of the gravitas/aura you project, the ways in which you communicate, your appearance, the impression you make and your authenticity. It is an essential quality for leaders and critical for all who want to succeed – a combination of traits and behaviors that can mean the difference between advancing or remaining…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

Law Firm MDPs Part 3 – Integrated Multi-Disciplinary Practices

11.01.17 | Susan Duncan

Recognizing the need to approach client problems and needs with broader and deeper substantive disciplines than just legal expertise, law firms have evolved their service offerings to include formal, integrated teams of lawyers, consultants and other professional experts. As early as the 1980s, law firms began to form separate subsidiaries  affiliations and joint ventures to…

Read More

Women’s Success Strategies for Advancement

09.20.17 | Susan Duncan

Despite the progress women have achieved in general and in law firms, many women continue to express frustration about how to compete and be successful as they climb the career ladder.   Enlightened firms have tried to tackle unconscious bias through mandatory training and intentionally putting more women in management positions. Some clients have gone…

Read More

Who are Law Firms Really Competing With and Why?

01.18.17 | Susan Duncan

Law firms are facing stiff competition when it comes to holding onto their clients, much less gaining market share. Given the flat growth in available legal work, law firms have been having to “steal” work from other firms to gain share. BTI Consulting’s Market Outlook and Client Service Review 2017 reports that while legal spending…

Read More

Law Firm Partnership Part 2: Becoming and Remaining an Equity Partner

12.14.16 | Susan Duncan

Our last blog post, “Law Firm Partnership Part 1: Do True Partnerships Still Exist?” explored the changes that have occurred in the partnership model in recent decades and the core aspects to healthy partnerships.  In this post, we will examine the qualities needed to advance to equity partner status and what it takes to be…

Read More

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…

Read More

Does your firm have the attributes of a world class sales organization?

10.09.13 | Susan Duncan

The Heiman Research Institute conducts an annual survey of worldwide organizations to determine what differentiates those that are the best in sales from all the others. While all types of companies were included in the survey, the report breaks out professional service firms from the rest. Relative to other types of businesses, professional service firms, a category…

Read More

Is Your C-Suite Siloed or Collaborative?

06.12.13 | Susan Duncan

As law firms continue to strive to run themselves as businesses, more are hiring senior level business executives who do not have law degrees or who have joint JD/MBA degrees but who likely have more experience in business than practicing law. Most law firm CEOs in the US and UK, however, are lawyers, many of whom still…

Read More