Almost every leader experiences the same dilemma: are they pushing people too hard to get things done or are they too soft and empathetic such that people don’t perform up to par. This is Joseph Folkman’s Harvard Business Review article from May 2022 that I found quite provocative — it suggests that balance is
Law Firm Management
How Should Senior In-House Counsel Respond to Uncontrolled Social Media Postings

How Should Senior In-House Counsel Respond to Uncontrolled Social Media Postings:
One of my Edge International colleagues, Jonathan Middleburgh, who is both an organizational psychologist and a barrister, is publishing a newsletter on Substack for general counsel. (You may remember him as the individual in our team who was responsible for the Edge International global
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Nick Jarrett-Kerr Videos: Planning for Recovery
THE STORY: In this video series that was produced by the Law Society of the United Kingdom and Wales, Nick Jarrett-Kerr – my Edge International colleague – offers guidance that is comprised of pure gold and precious gemstones.
CAREFULLY CONSUME EACH VIDEO: Watch as Nick in his laid-back style takes you to places that most…
Ignoring Outside Counsel Guidelines Can Be Costly
The Artificial Lawyer is reporting on a costly disconnect between U.S. law firms and their clients’ legal departments: The 2019 Annual Law Firm Leader Survey on Outside Counsel Guidelines shows that in the majority of cases, attorneys pay little to no attention to billing guidelines that have been established by their clients until it is…
Non-litigious Litigator Set a Powerful Example
A recent article in The American Lawyer, written to honour the memory of A. William “Bill” Urquhart of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, caused me to reflect on what we can learn from the examples of those who make a lasting mark on a specific firm, and on the legal profession in general.
The…
Flexibility a Key to Employee Satisfaction – Even in Law Firms
Writing in Inc., leadership specialist Marcel Schwantes predicts that traditional companies that want to hire and retain “the best” will need to adopt a principle set out by Microsoft founder Bill Gates several years ago: they will need to get more flexible.
As we discussed in a previous post, many valuable employees are…
The Value of Intellectual Humility
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Employees Who Work Remotely Can Help the Bottom Line
In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Barbara Z. Larson and Cirrus Foroughi share 2017 Gallup Poll and 2018 US Census data indicating that about 40 percent of U.S. employees work from home at least some of the time, and that about 5 percent work exclusively from home.…
Steven Rogelberg on How to Make your Meetings Less Awful
Watch this episode of Daniel Pink’s Pinkcast, featuring Steven G. Rogelberg, winner of the 2017 Humboldt Research Award and author of The Surprising Science of Meetings: How to Take Your Team to Peak Performance.
The video will take less than three minutes of your life, and can improve endless numbers of minutes and…
The Power of “How”
I propose* that you join the most effective law firm leaders in the world and start asking “how,“ rather than “whether.”
Let us start with an illustration. Here are two questions that a managing partner might ask a practice group leader. Which do you think will lead to better results?
- How do you think you
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