Welcome!

Welcome! If this is your first visit to this site, you may want to check out the introduction, or learn about me.

If you have been here before, then you can jump straight in. You can read the chapters in any order you like, but you may also find it useful to follow the structure below.

Business and Finance Basics

Overview: A quick overview of business and finance concepts that lawyers should understand, and that we will cover

Market demand

Technical note: A young lawyer's very basic overview of market demand

Application: A lawyer's guide to market demand - continued: Selling coffee to law students

Business Models

Technical note: Activities that create value: A gentle introduction to Business Models

Application: A gentle introduction to business models - continued: A coffee stand is a collection of decisions

Business organisations

Technical note: A "functional anatomy" of a business organisation

Management Accounts and Financial Accounts

Overview: Measuring Business Performance

Technical note: The basic criteria for a viable business: gross margin

Application: Gross Margin in Action: Examples from the Premier Law School Campus

Financing

Overview: The flavours of money, and the essence of transactional lawyering

Practice note: Solving the funding puzzle: principles for thinking about sources of funds

Technical note: Cash is King!

Technical note: Trade Credit: A closer look

Application: Trade Credit in Action

Technical note: Debt and information asymmetry

Technical note: Equity - A battleground for the soul of a business

Client Servicing

Practice note: The secret to servicing corporate clients (en español también!)

Practice note: A quick and dirty framework for figuring out what your client needs from you

Practice note: Technician, manager or advisor... What kind of lawyer does your client need you to be?

Practice note: Which parts of a contract do clients really care about?

Skills

Overview: Three Skills for Legal Technicians - An Overview

Technical note: The most useful page ever: A cheat sheet for reading and writing big numbers

Technical note: Skills for Legal Technicians - Mental Math

Technical note: Skills for Legal Technicians - Financial Models

Practice note: Skills for Legal Managers - Managing People

Practice note: Skills for Legal Managers - Managing Processes

Practice note: Skills for Legal Managers - Managing Projects

Business Management Topics

Risk

Practice note: Understanding "Risk" from a business perspective

 

Technical note: Risk aversion: a building block for understanding people, businesses and industries  

Practice note: How to get risk averse people to co-operate with you

 

Technical note: The role of risk in job design

 

Technical note: Marketing is from Mars, accounting is from Venus (usually)