Proposal #4 - [Why Should Law Firms Be Different?] by Bruce MacEwen

[Why Should Law Firms Be Different?] by Bruce MacEwen

What would I write about? My expertise focuses on professional service firms, and on my blog I discuss issues including leadership, strategy, finance, globalization, IT, and marketing, among others. I try to be particularly sensitive to the sui generis cultural and interpersonal-relationship aspects of high end service firms, but I also try to make a habit of asking, “Does this particular financial or structural characteristic of (say) law firms have an analog in the ‘rest’ of the economy, and if not, why should law firms be different?” Putting it differently, my default assumption is that the economics of law firms should be no different than the economics of other service-sector firms. And if there is a difference, but no meaningful reason why there should be one, I ask how the world would look were the difference removed. (As a recent example, I had a post about how the landscape would change if law firms could go public.)