In their 1994 landmark book on corporate strategy, Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras emphasized that the cultural success factor that distinguished high performing companies from their underperforming peers was operating according to a shared “Core Ideology” and…
Ark Group approached me in late 2018 to update the strategic planning for law firms book. You can find the second edition – with updated case studies and fresh discussions of value innovation and business model analysis at this link.
We addressed innovation (disruptive and otherwise) in a series of articles last summer. The topic is certainly not resolved as evidenced by the many posts responding to and expanding upon a recent discussion of disruptive innovation at Harvard Law School. …
Our joint research project with the Managing Partners Forum continues and our topic in February 2014 was practice group management. Specifically, are there particular responsibilities practice group leaders should be taking on in order to drive effective practice management? In…
This article is a follow-up to a major section in our recent article Non-Lawyers: A Critical Success Factor for the Law Firm of the Future. Namely, when should non-lawyers – and specifically, business development professionals – be expected to interact…
As noted at the outset of this year, Sterling Strategies has partnered with the Managing Partner Forum and TheRemsenGroup for a series of monthly mini-surveys of managing partners on topics of strategic importance to law firms and their leaders. It…
Many smart analysts and commentators have made their predictions for the legal industry in 2014. LexisNexis compiled a number of predictions; the Future Lawyers Network made their predictions for the UK legal market; the Wall Street Journal legal blog made…
Having great attorneys – well-trained, highly capable, hard-working and client focused – has long been a critical success factor for law firms. Strategically, it has become basic table stakes for competing effectively in the legal industry, particularly among more sophisticated…
Over the past year we have noticed an important word showing up more often in the strategy deliberations of our law firm clients. That word is intentional, literally meaning “done in a way that is planned or intended; thoughtful; deliberate;…
Most law firms are deeply in (or about to enter) budget season. We surveyed law firm leaders last year regarding best practices around budget development. As a seasonal follow-up to that survey, we offer the following five tips to improve…
Last month we talked about mid-size law firms: how best to define “mid-sized;” whether aggressive growth was the most logical strategy for mid-size firms; and alternatives to adopting an aggressive growth strategy. We got quite a bit of feedback –…
The Executive Committee of an AmLaw 200 firm (aspiring to become an AmLaw 100 firm) raised the following question. “(We’re at) an awkward size (roughly 500+ lawyers)…what should a mid-size firm like ours do (strategically)?” Given their aspirations, the answer…
We have written quite a bit about strategy implementation both on this blog and elsewhere. Those articles and books make the assumption that a good strategy is already in place. The topic of effective strategy development can (and has) benefit…
Our last post introduced the principles underpinning a valuable strategy tool – co-creation. We noted that co-creation is a tool particularly well suited to sophisticated legal practices for two reasons. First, in many respects co-creation principles align well with attorneys’…
This is the first in a two-part discussion of a valuable innovation tool for law firm leaders – “co-creation.” Co-creation has its greatest value at the individual client level, but can be applied at practice level as well. Co-creation dovetails…
The rise of Axiom, Clearspire and other disruptive innovators in the Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) segment of the market has led to a wave of articles and blog posts – some insightful and well considered and some likely to prove…
Steven Harper wrote a terrific piece on law firm culture in response to the latest Citi Private Bank/Hildebrandt update on the legal market. Harper is incredulous of Citi/Hildebrandt’s warning that “Law firms discount or ignore firm culture at their peril.” …
We have seen a spike of interest in the Balanced Scorecard since our December 2012 strategy question of the month focused on what kinds of measures law firms are using. As regular readers will recall, the only measures firms are…
Throughout the course of 2012, Sterling Strategies conducted monthly mini-surveys, each focused on a single strategy topic. The intent was to develop some empirical data on what works and what does not work relative to a variety of strategic management…
Our final strategy topic for 2012 focuses on what law firm management is doing relative to setting objective measures for their strategic plans. More specifically, what do law firms measure and are those measures in any meaningful way connected to…