Status quo

As we leave behind one of the most tumultuous decades in the history of the legal profession, the overriding message from some of the industry’s thought leaders is keep calm and carry on. At the end of 2009, Legal Business and leading Irish law firm McCann FitzGerald gathered nine legal experts together for dinner and debate at the Gherkin. We wanted to hear their views on how the legal market will shake up in the next decade, particularly while we’re still in the jaws of a global recession. The responses were assuredly unflustered; the mood was anything but pessimistic.

Turning first of all to the current transactional market, the ten participants conceded that the previous 18 months had been bleak, but believed that current signs were positive. Peter Baldwin, a corporate partner at Jones Day, pointed out that diversity of practice and geography has enabled the firm to top the charts and be well-hedged financially in the teeth of the crisis. Jones Day topped mergermarket’s global M&A table by volume for the first three quarters of 2009/10. While Baldwin admitted the tables show that deal volumes were down around 35% on what the firm was doing in 2007, and that average deal value had dropped from $500m to $100m, the fact that no single office in Jones Day’s network accounts for a significant proportion of global revenue means that the firm is not dependent on single sources of income. Similarly, because M&A is one of many practices, and Jones Day looks to keep people properly engaged on a varied diet of work, the firm is well positioned to ride the storm.

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