Operating profit at Clifford Chance (CC) UK LLP fell 5% to £260m in the year to 30 April 2019 amid rising pension costs while management at City rival Allen & Overy (A&O) saw a 8% pay rise to £16m, the two firms’ recently published accounts have revealed. The fall in profits at CC’s LLP – …
Continue reading “LLP accounts: Pension costs hurt CC profits as A&O leadership sees pay increases”
While missing out on the firm’s top management role, Hogan Lovells’ London office is all but certain to see one of its most prominent partners appointed as deputy leader for the second time in a row. Two weeks after the board recommended him as the firm’s next chief executive, Asia Pacific head Miguel Zaldivar nominated …
Sidley Austin has promoted two of its City associates to partner, including one of the 40 lawyers who has joined the firm from Chicago rival Kirkland & Ellis over the last three years. The round announced today (12 December) saw the number of those minted in the City lift on last year, when the firm only …
Its supporters are accused of advocating reforms not fit for purpose, posing a threat to the standing of the profession; its detractors are derided as ‘dinosaurs’, apologists for inequality and ‘buggers’ who moan about everything. Four years since the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) announced plans to shake up legal education in England and Wales with …
Continue reading “Regime change – The scorched-earth approach to legal education reform”
Marco Cillario assesses the background to RPC’s decision to abandon all-equity structure At a November press event held by a top-25 UK law firm, Legal Business was struck by a sudden spike in the guests’ interest in RPC. The 76-partner firm has long been a respected insurance and litigation business, and solid mid-weight operator, but …
In mid-October, when Legal Business decided it would dedicate this column to analysing the Belgian legal market, there was still the outside chance that it would appear in our first post-Brexit issue. By the time the piece was written a few days later, the UK Government had conceded defeat on its pledge to take the …
Canvassing ex-partners a few days after Hogan Lovells’ board recommended Miguel Zaldivar (pictured) as the firm’s next chief executive, Legal Business was in the awkward position of having to spell his surname. Even several current City partners admitted to having never met him. Yet the Hong Kong-based, Venezuelan energy and infrastructure specialist who spent most …
Continue reading “Comment: Miguel who? New Hogan Lovells chief is going to be a hard sell in Europe”
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has added four more lawyers to its ten-partner Wall Street M&A team, with three counsel and one associate joining the City firm from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. The move announced today (5 December) comes just over a month after the firm hired Cleary M&A veteran Ethan Klingsberg and partners Meredith Kotler, Pamela …
Continue reading “Freshfields fuels New York M&A growth with four more Cleary lawyers”
Baker McKenzie’s former London managing partner Gary Senior has admitted his behaviour after a firm event in 2012 amounted to sexual harassment towards a junior associate but said he did not believe at the time that his advances were unwanted. In the third of 15 days of hearings at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), Senior …
Baker McKenzie was accused of ‘collective failure’ for the way it handled allegations of sexual misconduct against its former London head Gary Senior yesterday (2 December), beginning a 15-day Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) hearing. Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) lead counsel Andrew Tabachnik QC of 39 Essex Chambers said the firm allowed Senior to seek to …
