Lateral partner-hiring has become a topic of strategic importance to law firms primarily because of flat overall market growth for nearly a decade. The challenge for law firm leaders is to ensure that the short-term perception of growth and dynamism that comes from lateral partner recruitment leads to stronger long-term economic results.
Read More
This article looks at managed services—a new category of legal firms that build systems to handle high-volume, repetitive work—and how they’re making millions of dollars from the effort.
Read More
In this article, Bill Henderson argues that the legal profession has a last mile problem: the legal profession has the personnel, technology and know-how to create legal solutions that clients want. But business models that will reward lawyers and organizations for leaps in legal productivity are missing to make this happen.
Read More
Following Harvard Law's decision to accept GRE in lieu of LSAT scores, Bill Henderson reflects on what this means for legal education and applicant diversity.
Read More
Arguing that the legal profession’s lack of progress on diversity stems from a systems problem and not a lack of moral resolve, Bill Henderson suggests ways firms can create a system for selecting and developing lawyers.
Read More
Bill Henderson tells the story of how Steve Jobs led Apple to the greatest market share story in modern history by using the focus principle: starting with the needs of the customer and working backward to the technology.
Read More
In the October 2015 ABA Journal cover story, Bill Henderson discusses legal operations and explains how it will offer steady income and challenges in law firms, businesses, and in-house departments.
Read More
Using the results of Northeastern University School of Law's Outcomes Assessment Project, Bill Henderson examines the empirical evidence on experiential education's impact on law student professional development.
Read More
Bill Henderson sets forth facts and principles related to the acquisition and development of human capital, which can aid firm leaders to obtain a large, sustainable competitive advantage in the market for legal services.
Read More
Bill Henderson summarizes innovations being developed at Bryan Cave, Seyfarth Shaw, and Littler Mendelsohn, and then explains how firms that innovate will develop a competitive advantage and ultimately take market share.
Read More
Assuming that the legal industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift, Bill Henderson explains why today's market leaders, both law schools and firms, might struggle to recognize, understand, and adapt to the changes.
Read More
After making predictions about the future of law schools and legal service organizations, Bill Henderson explains why feedback, despite its costs, is important to lawyer development and the future success of organizations.
Read More
Bill Henderson reviews two books, Steven Harper’s The Lawyer Bubble and Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers, and concludes that it is time to let go of old ideas, and to some extent, old institutions.
Read More
Some question whether a lawyer's skill set is determined by innate ability, but this article highlights stories of lawyers with a growth mindset: a belief that effort and learning can change abilities and intelligence.
Read More
Written shortly after the completion of a collaborative competition where professionals imagined a law firm of the future, this essay documents strategies that leaders may consider in a time when growth is dead.
Read More
In support of making legal education more experiential, Bill Henderson attempts to clarify how law schools can assess improvements in quality of their curriculums and determine if those improvements are worth the cost.
Read More
Bill Henderson explains how Axiom, a managed services practice, is targeting and servicing the same clientele as large law firms, dealing with prohibitions on fee-splitting, and ultimately disrupting the legal market.
Read More
After examining demographics of the licensed bar, Bill Henderson concludes that while a growing number of students are attending law school, those students are not going on to become members of the licensed bar.
Read More