What are the biggest challenges facing law firm leaders today, due to the economy?
Biederman: One of the challenges that firms are facing is what I would describe as an assault to their culture. I don’t think any of us have ever faced a situation where we really had to ask people to leave for economic reasons, maybe economic reasons as related to the individual, but not reasons as related to the general economy. I think, particularly in Chicago and really most cities other than New York, the expectation of most law firms and most lawyers in law firms has been that absent a lack of performance or failure to meet standards people more or less are guaranteed employment. I think this has been quite a shock to the culture of most firms. Andreozzi: I think it’s very easy to focus on the negatives of the situation, and obviously there are lots of negatives out there and an unprecedented period of economic stress for law firms. But I think it’s also a period of opportunity to rethink the attorney/client relationship. A lot of clients are doing that, and we, as law firms, hav
