Earlier this week, I had the privilege of teaching an advanced course in Law Practice Management as part of an LL.M. program. The class included associates, in-house counsel, and partners from some of the best law firms and legal departments in the region.

What particularly impressed me by the people in the class was their ability quickly and efficiently to penetrate through numbers and surface details in the fiendishly devious case studies I presented, to diagnose underlying issues and vulnerabilities that were the real potential causes of the problems, and to find solutions that could produce lasting results.

As we worked through the eight case studies, I thought about how, unlike the students in the class, many lawyers and law firms never take the time or invest the intellectual effort to do that. Instead, they frequently focus on obvious, quick-fix responses that usually only cover over the basic issues, which always return sooner or later and sometimes worse than ever before.