The best dispute lawyers often have something of the diva or rockstar about them – argumentative, uncompromising and brash. Michael Davison, head of Hogan Lovells’ litigation, arbitration and employment group, describes Neal Katyal, who runs the firm’s Washington DC disputes team, as such a figure. It is easy to see why: at the age of …
Continue reading “Bench strengths – Sizing up the City’s top dispute teams”
With deferred prosecution agreements proving a success and the scale of investigations increasing, things have never been busier for corporate crime firms. Anna Cole-Bailey discusses The consensus among white-collar crime partners is that financial misconduct cases are not going away any time soon. With many investigations historic, they leave deep footprints over time.
As #MeToo continues to shine an uncomfortable light on many industries, Anna Cole-Bailey looks at how its influence on employment litigation in firms is likely to come into full swing in 2019 For Sarah Henchoz, a partner in Allen and Overy’s employment team who has hailed 2019 ‘the year of culture’ for big employers, her …
Continue reading “Market Report: Employment – The toughest gig in town”
Chicago-born Christine Dekker’s decade-long run as legal counsel for McDonald’s has seen her relocate from the US to Shanghai for work in 2014 on a gamble that paid career dividends, ultimately earning her the role of general counsel (GC) for the UK and Ireland three years later. As vice president-GC for the restaurant chain’s Chinese …
Continue reading “The Client Profile: Christine Dekker, McDonald’s”
The first week of April saw no fooling around in the lateral hires market. King & Spalding has continued its six-month long lateral hiring run, bolstering its projects and disputes practices in London with a double hire of project development and financing partner Nikhil Markanday and arbitration and public international law partner Giorgio Mandelli. Last …
‘Before university I spent a year working in India in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, teaching English, maths and personal hygiene,’ Hugh Pugsley, general counsel (GC) for HSBC’s UK banking and insurance businesses, casually slips in at the end of the interview. Although his days of reading the complete works of Hector Hugh Munro (‘Saki’) to …
It used to be that law firms were rather more comfortable doling out advice than receiving it, but in an increasingly complex and regulated environment, major law firms can no longer make do bluffing their way through. Given that corporate governance at law firms can often be much less virtuous than the example they preach …
Continue reading “Watching the watchmen – inside the growing market for legal advisory work”
There is a certain irony to be had in the fact that the best general counsel (GCs) these days are so highly regarded because they are not lawyers in the traditional sense. Increasingly, the conversations the Legal Business team had while researching the 2019 GC Powerlist were about branching out into other areas, with risk …
The most significant moves are not always to rival law firms as the exit of Weil Gotshal & Manges’ City private equity partner Samantha McGonigle to co-found a growth fund goes to show. Perpetuating the busy start to the lateral market, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson has added to its City finance practice as …
