The field of operations management is focused on creating efficient and effective business operations. It recognizes that there are trade-offs that must be made between efficiency and service level (or…
Lawyers hate mistakes. They can be career-killers if you make them as an associate. Lawyers worry that clients will fire them or sue them if they make a mistake as…
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said at the outset of the Obama Administration. And yet, for many organizations, inertial forces…
Dan Elliott of Michigan State University College of Law’s ReInvent Law Laboratory is going to Australia for August. He is not going there for vacation—it will be winter in Australia—but…
As lawyers who also are legal educators, we must accept that the new normal is here to stay – a world with decreased law school enrollment, increased student debt, a…
The current state of the legal market probably feels unsettling, disorienting, and downright irritating to you. If so, then it might help to know that that’s exactly how the whole…
I recently received a strategy presentation from a very sophisticated law firm, which can be summarized in one, MBA-ish slide. The client is in the center planet, surrounded by “law…
The legal profession is under immense pressures. Clients are demanding steep discounts and increasingly insist on fixed prices or other forms of value-based fees. Law firm realization rates (that is,…
Earlier this year, The National Association of Women Lawyers released the results of its National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms. This annual survey provides sobering news on the state of women at the 200 largest firms in the country, collectively known as BigLaw.
In July, we talked about whether the change in law should be characterized as “Disruption, Eruption or Interruption?” This week, we drill down into one likely source of change,…
The ABA Journal wants to host and facilitate conversations among lawyers about their profession. We are now accepting thoughtful, non-promotional articles and commentary by unpaid contributors.