As institutions, firms face different, and in some cases, more intense structural challenges than most-if-not-all others. They are not held to the same standards of transparency, financial hygiene, and infrastructural-sterility as their publically-traded clients. Leadership and management can all too easily be unprepared for their incumbency and overwhelmed by double duties. The firm’s “product” is highly mobile and prone to flight during even minimal financial dips. And while these are just a few hurdles, they alone are more than enough to bring many corporate CEO’s to their knees. The industry presses on, regardless, and deserves some guidance in its evolution.

The Failing Law Firm was initially written with the purpose of simply illuminating the symptoms of a struggling firm. But after some research and contemplation, the author came to understand that by the time most symptoms revealed themselves, it is often too late for the attorney, management, or leadership to do something about them. He dug deeper, seeking not only to more effectively define and articulate the various major components of a firm’s embodiment, but, to also understand the ways in which they interact at a deeper, more fundamental level to induce stability or vulnerability.

This deeper understanding provides readers with a tool that is geared more toward predicting destabilization, rather than just defining it once it is happening. The other side of this coin is a blueprint that attorneys, management, and leadership can use in analyzing, or planning for, the robustness, cohesiveness, and strength of a firm’s infrastructure and embodiment. Importantly, and perhaps for the first time in a single volume, the themes and deeper phenomena that underlie the various components of a firm and how they interact--constructively or destructively--in a matrix fashion are discussed. Chapters include:

1. The End of Innocence
2. The Anatomy of a Failing Firm
3. The Money Press
4. Law Firm Governance
5. Policies and Procedures
6. Law Firm Cultures
7. Law Firm Leadership
8. Law Firm Strategy
9. Law Firm Compensation
10. Taking Academia to the Office
11. Sleeping with the Enemy?