Yesterday Gerry Riskin, of Edge International, invited me to lunch at The Cornell Club while he was passing through town.  Suffice to say that if you have a chance to meet Gerry (I had not, previously), and if you've ever given a lick of thought to law firm management, you're in for an intellectual feast.   Just a small sampling from our conversation:

• How to persuade uptight, analytically over-endowed law firm partners to let it all hang out in a brainstorming session (and it's not free beer).
• What having a background as a lawyer will get you in the role of consultant (try:  not being thrown out in the first 30 seconds).
• The attitude of altogether too many marketing directors at law firms (it could be better, shall we say).
• What "killer apps" on the Internet have in common (they do not mimic what previous media can do).
• Why, in the Caribbean, you better be prepared to order as soon as you sit down in a restaurant (the waiter won't be back for an hour).
• Mandatory rotation of associates through different practice areas (just do it).
• Denying unhappy associates the chance to transfer to a different practice area, even if it would entail a demotion (you are out of your mind).
• Whether lawyers can articulate what makes their firm distinctive in the marketplace (no).
• Whether marketing directors can articulate what makes their firm distinctive (three guesses).
• The percentage of typical executive committee members who know what "blog" means (you get to guess on this one, sorry—and same exercise for "RSS" and "wiki").
• His idols David Maister and Tom Peters.
• The percentage of typical executive committee members who recognize those two names (both:  5%  one or the other [probably Maister]: 10%).

Then he was off to the Apple Store in Soho with his under-the-weather Macintosh—there are no Apple stores in the British West Indies, where he lives.