Can a Return to 'Golden Era' Values Prevent Your Firm from Becoming the Next Dewey?
If former New York governor and famed federal prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey were alive today, he might recognize the new normal facing law firms as being a very old normal, said Paul Lippe, founder and CEO of the lawyer collaboration website Legal OnRamp.
To succeed today, America’s biggest law firms need to “recapture the best values … from their golden era of the 1950s through 1970s,” Lippe told Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia in an interview today.
Lippe recently published a 12-item checklist on ABAJournal.com to help big firm lawyers determine if their firm might be the next Dewey & LeBoeuf. The list, which Lippe told Bloomberg should look familiar to lawyers who founded successful firms 100 years ago, includes a more rigorous evaluation of mergers, whether between two entire firms or an existing firm and new lateral hires, and transparent evaluations of whether the spread of compensation between the highest- and lowest-paid partners is defensible.
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