Columns & Departments
Leadership in the Law: The Fallacy of Merger Math
If we were to analyze law firm mergers by plotting client satisfaction on one axis and partner satisfaction on the other, the resulting scatter diagram would reflect a surprising few combinations that were deemed satisfactory to all parties.
Features
13 Ways to Amplify Your Communications
Here are 13 tips to amplify your communications programs to meet the challenges of 2013 and beyond.
Features
Pressure Points: How to Move Forward Successfully with Technology Leasing
With the possibility of limited capital expenditures, financing technological advances will certainly be a way to stay within budget constraints and allow firms to continue investing in the latest and greatest technological trends. Leasing is one financing option that a firm can use to cut the out of pocket costs for technology upgrades and still be able to implement new projects by providing a monthly expense versus a total cost purchase.
Features
Partner Purges: Practical or Perilous?
There's a new trend on the horizon: partner purges. Are they necessary? Is such a drastic move ultimately good for the law firm?
Columns & Departments
Movers & Shakers
Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP recently welcomed John Salza as a principal in charge of tax accounting methods. In this role, Salza lends his expertise to tax engagements across Baker Tilly's industry practices.
Features
Profiting from the Learning Curve
A recent study published by Altman Weil listed the ways in which chief legal officers would like to see their outside counsel embrace service improvements and innovation. The top four responses were greater cost reduction, non-hourly pricing, more efficient project management and improved budget forecasting. To anyone paying even cursory attention to the legal marketplace in the last half decade, these should not come as a surprise.
Become Allied With Your Clients
Become Allied With Your Client - Improving your firm's customer service can do wonders for cementing business relationships and securing future work. Throughout your business relationship, reassessing and upgrading your work will improve customer service and exhibit your dedication to providing tailored professional services. By asking questions periodically and reevaluating the client's needs, you increase client retention rates and possibly win new business.…
ASK FOR BUSINESS
ASK FOR BUSINESS When was the last time you asked clients for new business? On the surface, that question may seem a bit silly. After all, asking for business once a company has signed on with your firm may feel a bit redundant. But consider this: asking for more work on a regular basis is a solid client retention tactic that could lead to botton-line dividends. Think business generation and value. If the new project involves work…
Take One Survey'
Professional survey and market research companies are generally pretty good. They use sophisticated modeling techniques and computerized formulae to tell us (with a margin of error of four or five points either way) who's going to win the next election and how high skirts are going to be next year. Highly scientific stuff ' but, unfortunately not always right. Which is why you have to take those surveys with a grain of salt.
Features
Preparing for Reverse Auctions
Rather than companies sending out RFPs to a number of law firms, they are now using a "reverse auction" to request quotes from law firms they trust. Here's how it works.
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MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
- Meet the Lawyer Working on Inclusion Rider LanguageAt the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.Read More ›
- Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar InvestigationsThis article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.Read More ›
- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.Read More ›