A number of contacts have been telling me of late that Legal Business is gaining a reputation for being ultra-bearish on the Magic Circle. So entrenched is this view becoming that one Freshfields partner has apparently taken to claiming to colleagues that LB is talking down the Magic Circle in favour of US players because …
Continue reading “We come not to bury the Magic Circle but to save it”
Once, not long ago, considerations of ethics were simple for law firms, if they bothered thinking about them at all. If what they were advising on was legal, however morally questionable, it was all good. Professional ethics? You didn’t need to worry – they were lawyers. Those halcyon days are passing. Consider the convulsions in …
I used to believe the UK legal profession was more imaginative than it got credit for – now I find with an increasingly jaded eye what fresh thinking there is has become stretched ludicrously thin. The vast majority of technology and new models are deployed to make the existing law firm a little more efficient …
Continue reading “The great distraction – The innovation bandwagon has hobbled market forces”
Nailing the issue of what makes a high-performing in-house function, with the emphasis on operational sophistication, has become the Holy Grail for general counsel (GCs). Following the launch earlier this year of the 2018 GC Powerlist – which highlighted 50 leading in-house teams – we teamed up with headline sponsor Eversheds Sutherland to assemble an …
Continue reading “The team in I: The GC Powerlist Summer Reception”
Though I’ve always known that soul-of-a-law-firm cover features are the biggest draw for our readers, the response to our Kirkland & Ellis epic in July has been striking. Not since ‘Branded’ two years ago exposed the state of King & Wood Mallesons’ European business has a piece in these pages provoked such an intense reaction. …
Continue reading “Comment: For good or ill, Kirkland is now redefining high-end law”
The latest financial year has not been a vintage period for those wishing the legal industry would fall into concise patterns. Glancing at the LB100, separating the winners and losers by breed is more difficult than at any time over the last 20 years. But murky as the picture is, some broad outlines can still be …
Continue reading “The LB100 Comment: Smoke, turmoil and a tonne of cash”
Within days of this issue hitting desks, it will be ten years since Lehman Brothers’ collapse marked what swiftly became the great financial crisis. That event was only the clearest symptom of a disease that had been infecting the banking system for more than a year before Lehman filed for bankruptcy on 15 September 2008. …
Continue reading “Comment: A decade since Lehman the profession still mired in the New Normal”
James Tsolakis, NatWest: One of the great challenges setting this up with Alex is in the long period I have been a banker to the legal profession, the rate of change is faster than I have seen for a long time. The challenge was defining the discussion. It could have been IPOs, artificial intelligence, international …
LB: What’s been happening in the two years since the Canada tie-up? David Fennell (DF), chief executive: One of the reasons for doing that combination was access to the US market, so our US sales are up by 18% year-on-year.
The latest financial year has not been a vintage period for those wishing the legal industry would fall into concise patterns. Glancing at the LB100, separating the winners and losers by breed is more difficult than at any time over the last 20 years. But murky as the picture is, some broad outlines can still be …
Continue reading “LB100: Smoke, turmoil and a tonne of cash”
