Walker Clark
Worldview Archives
What if our brilliant strategy fails?
Even the best business strategies can be knocked off-course, or sometimes even wrecked, by a crisis that the law firm only vaguely anticipated, if at all.
Some law firms not only survive crises, but actually emerge from them stronger than ever before. Our firm’s observations of the experiences law firms of all sizes, but especially small and midsize firms, worldwide between 2020 and 2022, suggest that you can make your law firm “crisis-resistant.”
You won’t be immunized from the effects of a crisis, but you will be able to resist its most serious effects and recover much more quickly.
The Law Firm of the Future: A Culture of Resilience
This is the final installment of a series of posts that have described and explored characteristics that will determine which law firms remain successful in the legal services industry of the future, and what law firms can do now to build them into their operations and professional cultures.
The bottom line for all of this can be described in a single word: resilience.
COVID-19 Update: Resilient Leadership in a Time of Crisis
Resilience has become a big buzz-word in the business world during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the legal services industry is not immune from it.
But what does resilient leadership look like in a law firm? How do the leaders of a law firm — both the titular ones and the de facto ones — successfully guide their organizations through bad times?
This article, first published in Walker Clark Worldview in 2015 and updated for the current crisis management context, offers six actions to build resilient leadership in a law firm. Remember, the goal is not just to get through the current storms, but to emerge from them stronger than before. To do this, everyone in a legal services organization — but especially in law firms — needs to deal with some very disquieting questions.
Balancing Optimism and Pessimism
In 2009, President Barack Obama faced the difficult decision about whether to proceed with his agenda for health care reform in the United States, on the heels of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
His advisors asked him somewhat facetiously, "Do you feel lucky? Because that is what it's going to take to pull this off."
Resilience: Playing an Unexpected Poor Hand Well Enough to Win
"We are in a window of change right now. There are certain traditional firms that will die," said Richard Rosenbaum, former CEO and current Executive Chair of Greenberg Traurig.
How can law firms become resilient during unprecedented changes in the profession?
Making Lemonade
Crisis usually brings opportunity, and one of Ukraine's leading law firms, Sayenko Kharenko, has demonstrated commendable strategic agility in response to the Crimean crisis in a newsletter that they published today.
