Mills & Reeve and CMS Cameron McKenna boosted their offerings at opposite ends of the insurance spectrum this week, taking staff from the Birmingham office of DLA Piper and the City office of RPC respectively. Top 50 UK firm Mills & Reeve acquired a nine-strong defendant insurance practice from DLA, marking the conclusion of DLA's withdrawal from the typically lower margin area of law, as first announced by the top 10 firm last year. The team, which will start at Mills & Reeve on 1 July and bring its client book, is led by DLA's former head of the Birmingham insurance group Alan Jacobs, who joins alongside five fee-earners and three support staff.

Do law firms take partnership for granted? They really shouldn't as the model has served them so well. Just consider the case. Partnership aligns management and ownership. This has helped large law firms to avoid the patchy governance and rewards-for-mediocrity seen at public companies over the last 20 years and drives partners to a pure form of performance pay. It is inherently long-term and as such has a strong record in promoting independence and ethical standards. And given that law isn't a capital-intensive trade – at least once you cross the Rubicon of international expansion – partnership is workable (if not ideal) from a financing point of view.

Securing a major deal and having one of your partners take a senior role with the same client is a nice trick to pull off but Allen & Overy (A&O) appears to have managed that this week after securing a lead role on the Co-op's rescue plan and 'donating' a veteran partner to the lender's management team. A&O today (18 June) confirmed that global financial institutions head Alistair Asher is leaving the law firm to join the Co-operative Bank as its new general counsel.