Adam Smith, Esq.

Adam Smith, Esq. is "an inquiry into the economics of law firms." The blawg links to and analyzes articles about law firm strategy and profitability.

Author: Author Bruce MacEwen is a law firm consultant in New York City who previously worked as an attorney at two large New York City firms and at Dean Witter/Morgan Stanley. He is an adjunct professor at SUNY Stony Brook’s Graduate College of Business and a member of Managing Partner Magazine's editorial board. He is also a lifelong distance runner and an opera devotee.

Blawg Related Categories: Law Firms • Law Practice Management • Legal Marketing & Consulting • Blawg 100

Recent Posts from Adam Smith, Esq.

Adam Smith Monument in Edinburgh
At long last, Adam Smith has been honored in his native Edinburgh, with a prominent statue outside St. Giles' Cathedral on the Royal Mile. As reported by the FT, the unveiling was yesterday: Vernon Smith,…
Happy 4th of July
Watching Fireworks on the Fourth: Coney Island, 1962 [Courtesy of Magnum]
How High Quality Are Your Lawyers? (How Can You Tell?)
This is a column about wringing our hands. Our first text, from the Old Testament conventional debate, stems from today's WSJ story on "Axiom Legal," headlined Newcomer Law Firms Are Creating Niches with Blue-Chip Clients,…
Lessons From Johnson + Johnson
Knowledge @ Wharton has an enlightening interview with William Weldon, CEO of Johnson + Johnson, on the challenges of leadership in a decentralized company. You may think the scale of J&J (120,000 employees, $61-billion in…
Northwestern Law School's "Accelerated JD" Program: It's Not About the Two Years
Late last week Northwestern University Law School in Chicago announced an "Accelerated JD" program, compressing the same 86 credit hours earned by traditional three-year JD students over the course of six semesters into five semesters…
A Modest Suggestion re Associate Layoffs
Three guesses what these numbers represent: Blank Rome 20 Cadwalader 35 Clifford Chance 6 Hunton & Williams ?* Paul Hastings ?* Powell Goldstein <10 Sonnenschein 37 Sutherland Asbill & Brennan 15* Thacher Proffitt 24 Thelen…
The Great Divide
Last week Eversheds sponsored a conference in New York, primarily targeted at senior inhouse counsel, to discuss the current and future state of relations between law firms and inhouse departments. It was not pretty. About…
GC's May Be Complaining, But Do They Really Want Change?
Over at LegalOnRamp there's an interesting discussion underway about the extent to which GC's do—or don't—seek genuine innovation in the way BigLaw provides services. I'm taking the liberty of republishing it here (with permission of…
The CIO Challenge: It's Not About Server Up-Time
Did you know that the venerable Booz Allen & Hamilton has truncated its name to "booz&co."? Not only abandoning a name with tremendous recognition and brand equity but, in a "what were they thinking!?" blunder,…
A Conversation with Ray Bayley of NovusLaw
In the course of two hour-plus long interviews over the past couple of weeks with Ray Bayley, co-founder of NovusLaw, I learned that everything I thought I knew about outsourcing was wrong. Or rather, that…