Following Harvard Law's decision to accept GRE in lieu of LSAT scores, Bill Henderson reflects on what this means for legal education and applicant diversity.

Arguing that the legal profession’s lack of progress on diversity stems from a systems problem and not a lack of moral resolve, Bill Henderson suggests ways firms can create a system for selecting and developing lawyers.

Using demographic data from the 2005-2006 edition of the NALP Directory, Bill Henderson analyzes diversity among legal employers and offers suggestions on how they can make greater progress in years to come.

Bill Henderson sets forth facts and principles related to the acquisition and development of human capital, which can aid firm leaders to obtain a large, sustainable competitive advantage in the market for legal services.

After making predictions about the future of law schools and legal service organizations, Bill Henderson explains why feedback, despite its costs, is important to lawyer development and the future success of organizations.

Using social science and empirical evidence, this book chapter argues that highly effective lawyers draw upon a diverse array of skills and abilities that are seldom taught, measured, or discussed during law school.

Relying on historical and contemporaneous evidence, this essay argues that traditional credentials-based human capital strategies have been masked by a steady multi-decade surge in demand for corporate legal services.

Bill Henderson explains how Milbank Tweed's initiative at Harvard University, focused on training and developing its associates, would allow the firm to grapple with market trends that any leading firm must conquer.

Despite a lack of evidence, large firms presume that candidates who go to an elite school make a better lawyer; Bill Henderson explains how elite credentials were repriced when firms experienced a downward pressure on fees.

Drawing upon the findings of a study designed to identify the traits of star performers, Bill Henderson explores an alternative to the law firm model and explains why firms will resist despite a potential for higher profits.

This article looks at managed services—a new category of legal firms that build systems to handle high-volume, repetitive work—and how they’re making millions of dollars from the effort.

In this article, Bill Henderson argues that the legal profession has a last mile problem: the legal profession has the personnel, technology and know-how to create legal solutions that clients want. But business models that will reward lawyers and organizations for leaps in legal productivity are missing to make this happen. 

In the January issue of American Lawyer, Bill Henderson and Evan Parker explore the top five strategies of the most successful law firms.

Bill Henderson summarizes innovations being developed at Bryan Cave, Seyfarth Shaw, and Littler Mendelsohn, and then explains how firms that innovate will develop a competitive advantage and ultimately take market share. 

Bill Henderson explains how Axiom, a managed services practice, is targeting and servicing the same clientele as large law firms, dealing with prohibitions on fee-splitting, and ultimately disrupting the legal market.

After examining demographics of the licensed bar, Bill Henderson concludes that while a growing number of students are attending law school, those students are not going on to become members of the licensed bar.

Lateral partner-hiring has become a topic of strategic importance to law firms primarily because of flat overall market growth for nearly a decade. The challenge for law firm leaders is to ensure that the short-term perception of growth and dynamism that comes from lateral partner recruitment leads to stronger long-term economic results.

Building upon two earlier installments on lateral partner hiring, Bill Henderson and Chris Zorn describe how firms need a measured approach to evaluating a prospective partner's business logic, skills, and other attributes.

On news of the lateral move of a process improvement team, Bill Henderson and Chris Zorn suggest that a sea change in the market for legal services is occurring and will eventually reduce the importance of lateral partner hiring.

Using principles from evolutionary biology, Bill Henderson and Chris Zorn explains lateral partner market dynamics to help understand why firms are engaged in hiring practices that are not beneficial in their long term interests.

Relying on over a dozen years of data, Bill Henderson and Chris Zorn establish an empirical foundation for discussing the lateral partner market and suggests that the best strategy for firms may be avoiding failure.

Drawing upon a dataset of Am Law 200 firms, this study documents that average profits per equity partner are higher in single-tier partnerships, even after controlling for geographic market segment and firm leverage.

Following Harvard Law's decision to accept GRE in lieu of LSAT scores, Bill Henderson reflects on what this means for legal education and applicant diversity.

Using the results of Northeastern University School of Law's Outcomes Assessment Project, Bill Henderson examines the empirical evidence on experiential education's impact on law student professional development.

Some question whether a lawyer's skill set is determined by innate ability, but this article highlights stories of lawyers with a growth mindset: a belief that effort and learning can change abilities and intelligence. 

In support of making legal education more experiential, Bill Henderson attempts to clarify how law schools can assess improvements in quality of their curriculums and determine if those improvements are worth the cost.

Honoring the legacy of one of the greatest people in legal education, Bill Henderson shares a competency model of six success factors that are foundational to the future success of first-year law students.

Admitting that demand for traditionally educated law graduates is collapsing, this strategy memo outlines structural shifts in the legal profession and provides a response to the legal academy's serious business problem.

Recognizing that law students have a vital role to play in the future of legal education, Bill Henderson implores students to question legal education's methods and motives, and use their energy to refashion education.

With the proliferation of technologies that are upending the delivery of legal services and products, Bill Henderson encourages students and lawyers to invest time to understand the intersection between law and technology.

Law schools have struggled with their role in the university and tried to legitimate law as an academic discipline rather than a trade; Bill Henderson argues that legal practice mastery is a mixture of science and art. 

This article summarizes the structural transformation occurring in US legal education and encourages law school faculty members to consider several questions to determine if and how curriculums should respond.

Bill Henderson examines how law students, law firms, and law schools use elite legal brands as a substitute for rational thought, when they should be thinking about developing a broader range of skills and knowledge.

Although experiential education in law schools should be applauded, Bill Henderson argues that these efforts are not enough to keep pace with the productivity imperative spurring innovation in other sectors of the economy.

In a critique on how the US News & World Report influenced legal education, Bill Henderson argues that a dynamic has emerged in which bad behavior among school administrators is rewarded and students are misled.

In the final installment in a series on strategy, Bill Henderson and Evan Parker outline the questions that firm leaders should ponder, thinking about where the firm is today, where it needs to go, and how best to get there.

In the second installment in a series on strategy, Bill Henderson and Evan Parker describe how firms can recapture market power and take market share by becoming best-in-class in a few practice areas that fit the needs of their clients.

Bill Henderson tells the story of how Steve Jobs led Apple to the greatest market share story in modern history by using the focus principle: starting with the needs of the customer and working backward to the technology.

Written shortly after the completion of a collaborative competition where professionals imagined a law firm of the future, this essay documents strategies that leaders may consider in a time when growth is dead.

Revisiting an essay that predicted the ultimate demise of traditional large firms, Bill Henderson more fully describes a seismic paradigm shift and begins architecting institutions that better fit the needs of a new economy.

When Dewey & LeBoeuf collapsed in 2012, many speculated that the firm's failure was the result of greed, but this article claims that argument does not take into account the larger structural problems affecting US firms.

Research shows that the single best predictor of success and satisfaction as a lawyer is to become truly client focused. In this article, Bill Henderson suggests resources for lawyers to become more client focused.

Beginning with the framework established in a 1991 book that documented the relentless growth of large US firms and drawing on empirical evidence, Bill Henderson updates the account of the modern large law firm.

Drawing upon a dataset of Am Law 200 firms, this study documents that average profits per equity partner are higher in single-tier partnerships, even after controlling for geographic market segment and firm leverage.

In the October 2015 ABA Journal cover story, Bill Henderson discusses legal operations and explains how it will offer steady income and challenges in law firms, businesses, and in-house departments.

Assuming that the legal industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift, Bill Henderson explains why today's market leaders, both law schools and firms, might struggle to recognize, understand, and adapt to the changes.

Bill Henderson reviews two books, Steven Harper’s The Lawyer Bubble and Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers, and concludes that it is time to let go of old ideas, and to some extent, old institutions.

Rachel Zahorsky and Bill Henderson discuss a variety of companies -- legal process outsourcing, document review, legal form, and e-discovery providers -- that are engaged in work once typically done by traditional law firms.

Based on an analysis of data from legal employers, Bill Henderson reveals how the legal market has changed in a decade and concludes that the biggest source of growth for firms in the future will be taking market share.

After explaining why the legal profession is entering a period in history in which it will need fewer traditionally-trained lawyers, Bill Henderson discusses a new generation of legal entrepreneurs emerging in the market.

Bill Henderson explains that in today's market traditional hiring methods do a poor job in selecting candidates, clients are not willing to pay for hiring mistakes, and critical skills and behaviors are not taught in class

Bill Henderson highlights data to support the conclusion that 2008 marked the beginning of a sea change for traditional law firms and then argues that existing hierarchies of legal employers and educators are vulnerable.

For decades, law firms grew and prospered because clients needed help adapting to an array of litigation, regulation, and business combinations, but Bill Henderson asserts that period of remarkable stability is over.

Drawing on employment data for law school graduates, Bill Henderson claims that while we experienced a major recession, low employment numbers are more the result of a fundamental reordering of the legal services industry.