At 62, Cesar Alvarez can't envision the day when he will take a decent vacation or socialize on a golf course. Leisure just doesn't suit him. For the past 14 years, Alvarez had arrived at his law office each morning, often on weekends, eager to make the tough decisions and deal with the challenges the CEO of a giant law firm must tackle. It is Alvarez's vision and energy that drove Greenberg Traurig from a small but prestigious Miami law firm known for corporate and real estate into a giant multi-state powerhouse with 1,750 lawyers and a variety of practice areas.

Now, a transition is underway, and Alvarez greets it with a mix of relief and enthusiasm. Alvarez says it took a lot of pushing uphill to build the firm that exists today and that he was ready to turn the CEO job over to a younger partner. Last week, he officially gave up the hot seat, bestowing the position on Richard Rosenbaum, 55, his handpicked successor. It is a position that comes with unusual power, including the decision making on annual compensation for all shareholders and the final say on most matters.

Alvarez calls the transition "smart business,'' training your successor while you still are healthy enough to give guidance. He sees his new role as executive chairman as one that looks at the big picture issues the firm faces going into the next decade of the millennium, enabling him to come up with strategies to keep the firm on the cutting edge.

Picking the right successor, and ensuring he does well in the job, is Alvarez's most important move, he insists. "If you don't pick the right successor, everything you did will be at risk.''

Cindy Krischer Goodman sat down with Alvarez to talk about his tenure at the firm, changes in the legal profession and his personal future as well as the firm's. "A lot of the basics are here to continue the effort,'' Alvarez said of the firm's future, post recession. "If we get the next phase right, and I believe we will, we have an incredible opportunity to come out better than we went into it.'' The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Q: Give me an example what's on you to-do list for next year versus what it would have been before you transitioned.

A: Before, my to-do list was that you sit there and you have plans to do x, y and z, and you don't do any of it because you're dealing with issues of the moment. You have to talk to this client, because we have a problem here, or manage that problem over there. Now, I want to get around to the offices and carry our messages to them. I'm focusing more on strategic issues such as how do we manage these transformational changes that are occurring in the legal industry, changing from an hourly method to other ways of billing. How do we create efficiency in the system? That requires a lot of thinking and planning. You have to deal with it practice group by practice group.

Q: If you started the firm today, would you build it the same way?

A: Knowing what I do today, if I needed to build a firm, I would build us again. Our thought was how could we build the best platform for delivery of legal service on a nationwide basis. We wanted to be in key financial centers and the key capitols. That's what we did. When we started, we had six offices doing about $100 million in revenue; now we have 30 offices and $1.2 billion in revenue. The key was to put offices where you need the services. We can get a lawyer in Phoenix to work on a matter for Phoenix rates. When a client comes to us and has litigation in eight cities, we can say you don't need to hire eight firms because we can provide legal services to you at the local rate in those cities. That blended rate is going to be cheaper for them.

Also, we have a blind compensation system. (Only Alvarez knows what each shareholder earns.) Without it, we would never have been able to build this firm. It's helpful because you don't spend half the year politicking about how much you are going to make and dealing with committees. Without that, we would not be here. We'd probably still be fighting about the first office we opened.

Q: What did you most enjoy about leading the firm to become what it is today?

A: vI enjoy seeing how many lawyers we brought in that used the platform we developed to expand their practice exponentially. You sold them the dream, and they lived the dream. That's a satisfying part of the job.

Q: What was least satisfying part of being CEO?

A: If you do this as many years as I did it, you have to like it and understand it and have the right personality for it. I was able to manage a lot of years. You have to let things go. If things don't go the right way, this is not a blame game.

Q: What's your stamp on the law firm?

A: We were very successful in this period of time. We had incredible growth and got to be one of the top 10 firms in the United States. We were not even on the American Lawyer Top 100 firms at the time I became CEO. I don't know that anyone else has been able to lead that kind of change. I think my shareholders view me as a fair, intellectually honest and willing to admit to mistakes.

Q: Tell me about a big mistake and how you handled it.

A: I may have picked someone who was the wrong person to lead the office or practice. Then you have to deal with it because that person didn't live up to what you thought they could do. We have hired lawyers that didn't work out the same way. Overwhelmingly, we hired the right lawyers. But it is your willingness to say, îîwe need to make a change.'' It's only a mistake if you see a set of facts that would occur in the future are not there and you ignore it. Your own unwillingness to face up to the situation is when it becomes a mistake.

Q: What do you know now that you wish you knew years ago?

A: How important the culture of a firm is. Sometimes people tell you how critical culture is. When I started, I said culture is a nice thing, but unless you drive success, culture won't mean anything. In fact, I know now that it is the opposite. You need to drive the culture, and culture will drive success. It took me a couple years to figure it out.

Q: What was your best decision as CEO?

A: To work closely with Larry Hoffman (the previous CEO) and continue to have him as my mentor and a person I can go to with a tough problem. Having him as a sounding board was my best decision. Also to let others make decisions, and not to over manage. Our ability to work collaboratively is what set our firm apart.

Q: The recession and the need for changes in billing structure appeared to catch the legal industry by surprise. Did it catch your firm by surprise?

A: People think the problems in the legal industry started in 2008. They really started in 2000. Out of five key drivers of profitability, only one had been working --the ability to increase your rates every year. I knew we were hanging on and we started focusing on our costs. That helped us quite a bit.

That's why when people were saying this is going to be short recession and we'll come out and we can continue with the old ways, we said that's the high-risk strategy. If you don't change and you happen to be wrong, you are out of the game. If you change and can deliver more legal services more efficiently you will come out OK.

The hourly business is not going away but that will be diminished. There are new ways of billing and doing things creatively and efficiently. Firms that can figure that out will survive.

Q: If a young associate comes to talk to you about work life balance, what do you say to him?

A: When I was an associate I wanted to do as many deals as I could as a corporate securities lawyer. I worked a lot of hours: Monday though Sunday. Ultimately you have to sell two things -- for the client to trust you as human being and as a lawyer. If you haven't been at these deals you won't be able to sell yourself to the client. My point to young associates is you have to invest in yourself. What you get paid in the first few years is insignificant.

Today associates want the outside life. You have to remember they have to choose to lead the life of a lawyer, not be here to have the lifestyle of a lawyer. If they want lifestyle without being a real lawyer it will not work long term. It's a business that requires a lot of experience.

Q: Does it require major personal sacrifice to be good lawyer today?

A: Absolutely. Nothing has changed from that perspective. This is difficult profession, period. It requires a lot of time and effort. There are wonderful rewards, but you cannot substitute time and effort, not when someone else is putting in the time and effort.

Many associates still don't believe it. Now they are feeling the recession, the uncertainty. They have never felt the uncertainty. They have always been in a system that rewarded them again and again even when their hours were going down.

Q: Have you seen a change in attitude?

A: Definitely. They realize they are lucky to have a job and are more focused on what they need to do to have their career.

Q: Do you think the legal profession as a whole will address client expectations brought about because of technology?

A: I think you have to be connected to the client all the time. We're in the business of solving problems. Problems aren't just legal issues. The great lawyers know how to handle problems. You want to be an advisor, not just a technical lawyer. You have to spend time understanding the business of client. You have to invest time and stay connected.

Q: Does Greenberg have a mandatory retirement age?

A: No. Because we pay on performance, it is easy for us. As you are slowing down, as long as don't have a problem with having compensation adjusted, we can do that. There are people here who spent a lifetime making relationships. Why throw them out of the firm? Bob Traurig is still around. I have never asked anyone to retire and never will. But they have to adjust compensation and they have to work some amount of time. They can't just not come in.

Q: What do you think is going to happen with the tremendous number of unemployed lawyers?

A: The economy deals with supply and demand. The adjusting mechanism is price -- what they will be willing to be employed at and what we can charge a client for them. Once that comes into balance again, you will have a different issue. I think the demand for our product will continue to go up but I think it is going to take a while to get back to the old days.

If I was a young lawyer and displaced from a large firm, I would be going into one of new areas and be at the ground floor. I'd be learning energy policy and how it works. A few years from now you will become very valuable to law firms. You could come back at a high level if you focus on areas that are new. Firms will always be buying that expertise.

Q: What would happen if you don't agree with a decision the CEO makes.

A: We will have a discussion and try to get a consensus. But in the end, people would say, ``Cesar, you figure it out.'' Now we will say, ``Richard, you figure it out.''

Q: Is one of your projects going forward overseeing the move to your new offices?

A: That is basically done but I have been hands on with that. We have looked at every aspect of the practice of law that makes sense today. But it's not just our office space.

In 2007 had a large meeting and asked everyone to look at everything we are doing and tell me why, to tell me how we can be more efficient. We have to be much more efficient.

Clients are saying we used to pay you $10 million, now were only going to pay you $8 million. You figure it out.

My focus going forward with the experience I have is to look at any department and get them to focus on how to do things better than they were doing.