The Law Society has not always seen eye-to-eye with its City firm contingent but the hire of Allen & Overy’s (A&O) global markets partner Stephen Denyer, who is leaving the Magic Circle firm to join the representative body as City and international head, may go some way towards building a bridge between the two camps.
Despite moving across from private practice Denyer, who is charged with developing relationships with larger firms, already has form in this kind of role.
ASX-listed firm Slater & Gordon (S&G) continues to make inroads into the UK’s personal injury (PI) market having confirmed today (24 October) it has acquired Manchester-based clinical negligence and PI practice John Pickering & Partners.
S&G, which generates an annual revenue of £27.7m, made the announcement at its annual general meeting in Australia yesterday, but made no mention of recent reports that it is in talks to acquire Manchester-based Pannone’s consumer services business.
Mayer Brown has added to its tally of recent London hires as Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) finance and restructuring partner Trevor Wood joins the US firm.
Wood will be reunited with former BLP banking and finance partner Richard Todd when he joins 1,536-lawyer Mayer Brown, which has made six lateral hires in its London office in the last month, compared to just five in 2012.
Meanwhile, BLP’s partner departures continue in the wake of the firm’s disclosure in September that its profits for 2012/13 are down by nearly 40%. The firm also unveiled a drop in revenues this summer of 5% to £233m, making it the worst financial performer of the top 25 UK firms.
I am sure you, like me, have been on the lookout for an elegant, readable, sophisticated and fairly short book about sovereign debt agreements. And one that happens to end as a critique of elite legal practice. And here it is, The Three and a Half Minute Transaction: boilerplate and the limits of contract design by Professors Gulati and Scott. It blends economic and behavioural theory, history and law, qualitative and quantitative data with solid and measured arguments.
Further movement in the Paris market has seen Linklaters announce a trio of high level hires as Matthieu de Boisséson, Pierre Duprey and Roland Ziadé join as partners in its Paris office in a move to boost the Magic Circle firm’s arbitration offering.
Duprey arrives from Paris firm Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier, where he spent 11 years as an arbitrator, and he is joined by of counsel Andrew Plump. Ziadé comes over from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton where he was counsel, and de Boisséson was a tenant with Littleton Chambers. While at Littleton Chambers, de Boisséson worked on about 90 cases as chairman or co-arbitrator in the International Criminal Court. He oversaw cases in the construction, telecommunications, oil, and mining and pharmaceuticals industries.
The United States’ largest firms are losing market share to the band of firms below, according to a study by LexisNexis released yesterday (22 October) for the three years ending 30 June.
The CounselLink Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report shows that the 50 largest US firms, with at least 750 lawyers, have seen their share of client fees paid in the US drop to 20%, down from 26% three years ago.
Just weeks away from its merger with King Wood & Mallesons, SJ Berwin corporate heavyweight Ed Harris is leaving for Hogan Lovells as Bingham McCutcheon also raids Jones Day to build its London competition team and Osborne Clarke’s remaining two-partner private client team joins Bond Dickinson.
Harris, who will move across to Hogan Lovells on an unknown date as a result of ongoing negotiations with management, has been at SJ Berwin since 2007 and has advised a number of high profile clients including Terra Firma, Pantheon Ventures Investindustrial, EQT, Actavis and Constellation Software Inc.
Back in the boom years, international law firms talked confidently regarding how liberalisation would soon be coming to major legal markets in the Asia Pacific region. This week provides another reminder that in reality such emerging jurisdictions have been rather more tactical – and protectionist – than starry-eyed managing partners believed back in the go-go days.
The incident in question has seen Clifford Chance (CC) publicly criticised by the Singapore justice minister for having the temerity to announce that it was offering litigation services via a formal association set up last year with the boutique Cavenagh Law.
Having worked her way up Nationwide‘s ranks to group general counsel, Liz Kelly is to leave the building society at the end of the financial year to spend more time with her family.
Kelly was appointed as general counsel in 2009 and has since pulled together what was a fractured legal department, creating a risk-based blueprint for areas where it needed to grow and building it up to around 50 lawyers, including seven litigators.
Private equity exits are turning 2013 into the best year for UK IPOs since around 2010 as Slaughter and May and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett represent Infinis and its principal shareholder Terra Firma while Ashurst advises the banks on the wind power company’s £1bn float.
Slaughter and May corporate and commercial partners Jeff Twentyman and Kathy Hughes notched up another IPO for the firm, having already advised on high-value floats this year such as Countrywide and Esure.
