My client was an Amsterdam-based investor who wanted to build an aviation services business in the United States. As a corporate and commercial lawyer whose practice largely emphasized the transportation sector, I needed to get this client the best advice possible on positioning its new business from a U.S. federal…
I ended Part 2 of this three-part post with this: “Naysayers contend that Big 4 accounting firms cannot enter the U.S. market for legal services due to ‘regs and laws’ the ‘preclude Big 4 entry’. “Is that really true?” No, it’s not. … First — Big 4 accounting firms’…
I concluded Part 1 of this three-part post by asking: For business owners and managers, what could the Big 4 accounting firms offer to client companies that a conventional law firm does not? In his U.S. Law and the Big Four: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?“, Stephen Embry,…
My most recent post urges business owners and managers to seek terms of service from their legal services providers that are consistent with the basic management disciplines that they require in every other part of their companies — other than legal. That means finding alternatives to the terms of service that…
In Part 1 of this two-part post I wrote that the conventional business law firm does not compete on the terms of service — does not adhere to management disciplines — that best serve client companies: Know what the price will be before you agree to pay it. Don’t accept…
Competition creates the value that the customer gets. There’s no substitute for it. Take a look at this morning’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required): “Charles Schwab, Fidelity Escalate Brokerage Price War”. Featuring a picture’s-worth-a-thousand-words chart showing Schwab’s average commission per trade going from $12 in 2015 down to a little more than…
There really is no such thing as a “harmless” legal document. Yet we all from time to time get requests to execute paperwork that we’re told is “a formality” or “merely technical” or “just something the lawyers want us to sign”. The urgency of circumstances, or peer pressure, or a…
Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities famously begins: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ….” On one hand, the legal profession’s hourly billing-based business model rules the day in most law firms. And…
Business people care about results. That was the biggest lesson I learned upon crossing to the client side of the lawyer / client table. After spending a decade as a practicing attorney. Kind of a “duh” factor for my friends who’d lived and died by the P&L all their careers.…
Part 1 of this three-part post described software engineer-turned-attorney Jason Barnwell’s introduction — two months into his first law job after graduating from USC Law School — to the legal profession’s idea of “productivity”. As the junior lawyer on a deal team, he offered to automate the process of creating…