♫ Do the right thing baby do the right thing
Go with your heart and do the right thing..♫

Words and music by Jim Lauderdale, Gary Nicholson, performed by George Strait.

The Oct/Nov 2008 issue of Law Practice Magazine is now out and the Profitability column that I co-write with my colleague and fellow Practice Management Advisor Laura Calloway is  now on the web:

Business guru Peter Drucker offered this brilliantly succinct description of the difference between managing and leading: Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Makes sense—but can you measure the cost-benefit tradeoff of one against the other in a law firm, in both qualitative and quantitative ways?

The authors have dealt with hundreds of lawyers and law firms in our years as practice management advisors. When asked to perform confidential evaluations, it becomes apparent fairly quickly when we’re working with a firm that falls into one of four areas in terms of leadership and management. We fancy those four areas as being like elements of the cosmos, so indulge us while we spin that metaphor to explore leadership in qualitative terms. Then, we’ll pitch some benchmarking data for a more quantitative perspective.

A Law Firm Cosmology in Four Parts

In the universe of law firms, management and leadership—be they strong or weak—intersect to produce the following types of firms.

To read the rest of the article, go here: http://www.abanet.org/lpm/magazine/articles/v34/is7/pg50.shtml.