Former Paul Hastings litigator disbarred following Bar Standards Board appeal

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The Bar

A former Paul Hastings consultant and barrister has been disbarred after it emerged that he had lied about his education and qualifications, following a successful appeal by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) against the earlier decision of an independent disciplinary tribunal to suspend him.

Announced today (22 January), the BSB appealed against a disciplinary tribunal, held in late September, which ordered that litigator Dennis O’Riordan be suspended from practice for three years after it was proved he had falsified a range of qualifications and achievements, including degrees from Harvard and Oxford University.

Freshfields supports BITC campaign by removing criminal history question from application forms

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Social diversity Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has opted to remove questions relating to criminal history from its job application forms in a bid to assess job seekers for its business services and support services functions on the basis of merit.

The Magic Circle firm says it is the first law firm to remove the criminal-record disclosure box from its preliminary application forms so job seekers are not excluded because of unrelated criminal convictions.

LLP filings 2012/13 – DAC Beachcroft, Dentons, Olswang and Ince & Co reveal numbers

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Financial results 2012/13 CMS UKDAC BeachcroftDentonsInce & Co

DAC Beachcroft, Dentons, Olswang and Ince & Co have joined the ranks of leading UK law firms to have filed their limited liability partnership (LLP) accounts on Companies House, with the former three all seeing an increase in their bank debt.

Dentons UKMEA LLP saw its bank loans increase by around £3m in the 2012/13 year, while profit was down 10% to £28.3m, which the firm attributed to increased marketing and administration costs stemming from its tripartite merger with Salans and Fraser Milner Casgrain.

Revenue at the top-10 firm dropped 1.5% from £144.8m to £142.8m.

Cyber warfare – Norton Rose Fulbright hires global chief information security officer

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Cyber security Norton Rose Fulbright

Top ten LB100 firm Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) has moved to further protect client information with the hire the former head of cyber security for National Air Traffic Services (NATS) Paul Swarbrick as its global chief information security officer (CISO) in the London office.

Announced today (21 January), Swarbrick will join the senior management team, and work closely with IT and the business internationally to ‘strengthen proactively, and develop, a consistent approach to information assurance and cyber security worldwide,’ a firm statement said.

DAC Beachcroft launches New York base as part of transatlantic alliance

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US DAC Beachcroft

Its international expansion has been extensive in recent years but UK insurance firm DAC Beachcroft has complemented its push in the Americas by opening a representative office in New York to build relationships in the US.

Located at One Battery Park Plaza in Manhattan, the new office forms part of a strategic alliance with specialist New York insurance law firm, Abrams Gorelick Friedman & Jacobson (AGF&J), to work more closely together in New York and London to better serve the interests of their insurance clients.

The 1,000-lawyer, top 25 UK firm, which already has a widespread presence in Latin America, says the new Manhattan base, which opened on Monday 20 January, will promote its multi-jurisdictional insurance capabilities, especially in Latin America, and its international commercial litigation and arbitration in North America.

Expansion for Global 100 giants as Bakers plans new offshoring centre and Reed Smith launches in Kazakhstan

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Asia Baker McKenzieReed Smith

Baker & McKenzie and Reed Smith will further extend their global footprints, with Bakers looking at another low-cost offshore base after its success in Manila while Reed Smith has today (21 January) announced a new launch in Kazakhstan with the hire of one partner each from Morgan Lewis and White & Case.

Bakers, which launched its captive offshore support centre in Manila in at the turn of the millennium, is ‘exploring options for replicating the model in other jurisdictions’ but at this time has no set timetable.

Guest Post: See Talent. Liberate it.

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Leadership

It’s been viewed online nearly seven million times. Sheryl Sandberg calls it one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley. And it was created by the company whose stock increased in 2013 more than any other’s in the S&P 500—up nearly 350%.

“It” is a 126-slide PowerPoint called ‘Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility,’ and it outlines Netflix’s approach to just that—culture—although it has primarily been interpreted as a ‘reinvention” of HR,’ as this Harvard Business Review article puts it.

Going through the entire PowerPoint (I have) is valuable in and of itself; if nothing else, you’ll see how very well done PowerPoints can be, for a change. But the HBR article, written by the former head of HR at Netflix itself, distills their approach to talent into five tenets based on two key insights into how people actually feel about performing their jobs.

Protests and resignations but the High Court says QASA is lawful

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Legal affairs

Following months of protests from the criminal Bar including the resignation of a number of barristers from the Bar Standards Board’s (BSB’s) disciplinary panel, the High Court today (20 January) dismissed a formal judicial challenge of the controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates, ruling that the scheme is lawful.

The court found that the scheme, under which barristers may only accept trials on a par with their assessed and graded advocacy abilities, does not constitute a breach of European law and falls within the legitimate exercise of the powers of the Legal Services Board (LSB) and the three regulatory bodies that submitted it to the LSB for approval.

All grown up – HSF’s Belfast volume disputes centre pilots post-merger Australian litigation

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Litigation Herbert Smith Freehills

When legacy Herbert Smith set up its volume disputes support centre in Belfast in 2011 it was, despite or perhaps because of the fact that it was at the vanguard of this kind of move, a conservatively promoted step, with initial plans to train only around 20 fee earners, including a mix of solicitors and legal assistants.

Post its merger with Freehills, the growth of this successful centre is evident as its latest pilot to roll out the use of the Belfast centre to its Australian merger partner for Australian litigation gets underway, and the fact that it has, three years later, blown its initial growth targets out of the water with 120 permanent employees, almost evenly split between qualified lawyers and legal assistants.

Deutsche Bank pinpoints litigation costs for wiping out its fourth quarter profits

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Litigation Deutsche Bank

Frankfurt-headquartered Deutsche Bank yesterday (19 January) partially blamed its full-year litigation expenses of €2.5bn for a fourth quarter pre-tax loss of €1.2bn, shortly after Morgan Stanley blamed legal costs of $1.2bn for its drop in net income during the same period.

Deutsche Bank’s litigation fees amounted to €528m for the fourth quarter.

The bank – Germany’s largest lender – in December agreed to settle its mortgage-backed securities litigation with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with a pay-out of €1.4bn. Deutsche Bank was one of 17 financial institutions the FHFA made claims against in relation to residential mortgage-backed securities.