Legal Business Blogs

Better Call Saul: Osborne Clarke re-elects veteran senior partner

Osborne Clarke (OC), one of only three firms in the current UK top 100 to have more than doubled its revenue organically since 2012, has seen Andrew Saul re-elected as senior partner for a second four-year term.

Saul (pictured), a corporate partner at the firm for more than 21 years and head of that team for seven years, was voted in unopposed to the position he first took on at the start of 2014. He will remain a member of OC’s international council with his re-election.

Saul’s term as senior partner has coincided with an impressive run of growth for the firm. OC turned over £209m in 2016/17, one of the strongest set of results in the UK top 100 this year and 152% up on a decade ago, good for the fifth-best organic performance of an LB100 firm since 2007.

Speaking to Legal Business, Saul said he was pleased the partners had shown confidence in him for another four years, commenting: ‘The figures show that the firm has performed well over the last four years-plus.’

He added that while he was delighted with how the firm has progressed, his focus for the next term would be on consolidating and strengthening its position internationally.

The senior partner spends nearly half his time maintaining his corporate practice, where he is a specialist in digital business, and said he enjoys the blend between a leadership role and working with clients.

The firm has recently been busy expanding globally, including the recent opening of an office in Stockholm led by two laterals. In May, it opened in Shanghai under than name Zhang Yu & Partners, bringing on two partners and six other lawyers. This followed OC’s associations with OC Queen Street in Singapore last August and Hong Kong-based Koh Vass & Co in 2015.

Saul said while the firm was continuing to grow, like every other firm, it was subject to the mercies of the global economy, commenting on the potential headwinds ahead: ‘I wish I knew the answer to that.’

hamish.mcnicol@legalbusiness.co.uk

For more on the rise of Osborne Clarke over the past ten years, see ‘Reversal of fortunes – how three mid-tiers outgunned the City elite for a decade’