Law Roundtable
Adam Smith, Esq.
America has been through many crises and challenges before, far worse than what we're experiencing today. Need I mention (keeping it to economics and not including wars), the hardships and deprivations brought on by the Civil War, the long depression of 1873-1895, the Great Depression itself, the grinding stagflation of ...
When non-lawyers ask what's happening in the world of law these days (i.e., what ATL is covering), our first response is usually one word: layoffs. It's been a dominant theme in our coverage since the fall.
Periodically, I feel it incumbent upon myself to report to you, Dear Reader, my indispensable audience, on what I know about the "Adam Smith, Esq." community.
So, based on reader surveys and stats logs from my hosting company, and without further ado:
73% of you are in the US, ...The Latham news is of course all over the place: The WSJ Law Blog, Above The Law, The AmLaw Daily, LegalWeek, and etc. The figures are, frankly, grim:
190 associates laid off, ...If you'll be in Washington, DC this coming Tuesday, March 3rd, yours truly will be moderating a panel scheduled to run from 11:45 am — 1:30 pm on "The Media & The Legal Profession," at a conference sponsored by Georgetown Law's "Center for the Study of the ...
Just as I was thinking it was about time to publish a column on the topic of "leverage" at law firms (roughly speaking, the associate to partner ratio, although there's more than one way to calculate something that people will call "leverage"), here comes a slew of ...
Well, that'll teach me...
The volume of commentary following my publication earlier this week of "The Great De-Leveraging" has been unprecedented. Depending on your attitude, that is either deeply gratifying or almost overwhelming. As one who takes the positive view by default, I choose option A.
Therefore, I wanted ...
From time to time, people ask me what I'm reading when trying to figure out what is going on in the economy these days. A glib response might be, "anything I can get my hands on," but the question deserves a more thoughtful response, so herewith a book review and ...
Just as McKinsey's consulting practice centers on corporate America, certainly its core clientele and expertise, as opposed to law firms, where they have no domain expertise that anyone would notice, the McKinsey Quarterly surveys do not encompass law firm leaders, but global corporate executives. Nevertheless, these are widely traveled ...
Is capitalism dead?
The Financial Times has an ongoing series, The Future of Capitalism (I haven't read it all, but "dubious" would seem to be the most apt one-word review so far), Knowledge @ Wharton has "revisited" ...