Social media giant Facebook has appointed Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s co-head of IT and data privacy Ashlie Beringer as deputy general counsel (GC), just weeks after Twitter announced Vijaya Gadde will take over as GC of the online social networking group.
Beringer takes over from Colin Stretch, who this summer succeeded Ted Ullyot as vice president and GC, following Ullyot’s announcement in May that he would be stepping down.
Following an unusual waiting game that has ensured Berwin Leighton Paisner’s profit figure has remained a topic of growing interest since the financial reporting season ended, the top 50 firm has confirmed that its profits are down by nearly 40%.
The 786-lawyer firm has revealed a 39% drop in profit per equity partner (PEP) from £660,000 to £401,000 and a 38% drop in net profits to £39.4m. This is the most significant drop in PEP of the LB100 top 50 firms over the past year, following 332-lawyer Trowers & Hamlins, which saw its PEP fall by 37% to £304,000. It is the second largest drop in PEP of both halves of the LB100 after Manches in 93rd place, which recently confirmed it is in merger talks with Penningtons and which saw its PEP fall by 43% to £134,000.
I’ve spent the last two days at the QualitySolicitors conference in Manchester. I was invited to chair the opening session of the event and stayed to listen to the rest.
This was on the basis that I would not report on product development that was discussed but is not yet in the public domain, so I can’t tell you everything I heard.
But having done this and had the chance to speak to the chiefs of several QS firms, it may come as a disappointment to the QS knockers out there (and there is no shortage of them) that I sensed the network is heading into a positive new phase.
A former Bircham Dyson Bell partner has been struck off the Roll after knowingly overcharging clients, misusing client funds and making false expense claims to the tune of nearly £2m.
William Pencharz was asked to leave Bircham Dyson in February 2010 after a routine review of a file relating to the estate of ‘Ms JB’ raised concerns and led to the review of a further 181 files by the firm.
Of those files, 83 raised suspicions of client overcharging – with one client overcharged by as much as 1100% on a worst case scenario costs draftsman’s estimate. Thirty one files revealed misuse of client funds for minor expenditure and 85 files showed inadequate accounting to clients. Pencharz was also found to have forged three clients signature.
DLA Piper has further bolstered its Asia Pacific offering with the hire of a four-lawyer IP team from Jones Day in Beijing, led by the US firm’s former head of IP in China, Horace Lam.
Lam will join DLA’s Beijing office in October along with counsel Stacy Yuan and associates Alicia Ma and Helen Ding, together with the additional hire of IP lawyer Miya Wen from Rouse.
Prior to joining Jones Day in May 2011, Lam was the Beijing managing partner of Hogan Lovells and head of the firm’s IP practice. He focuses on IP disputes, protection strategies and licensing.
The UK government may be short of funds but it has generated high value deals for Baker & McKenzie, Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) Bird & Bird and Simons & Simmons in the past few days as the recent initial public offering (IPO) wave also see CMS Cameron McKenna advise on an Alternative Investment Market (AIM) float.
As the government moves to instal smart meters in all homes and small businesses by 2020 in a programme worth £12bn, Simmons advised long standing client Telefónica UK on a £1.5bn contract awarded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to act as smart meter provider for central and southern UK.
Ashurst today (26 September) effectively threw down the gauntlet to a number of its newly-merged competitors by announcing it has ‘overwhelmingly’ voted in favour of full financial integration with Blake Dawson, including agreeing on a single profit pool.
The united firm will operate a managed lockstep and will have a single unified management structure operating globally under the Ashurst brand, after Blake Dawson rebranded as Ashurst Australia.
The in-house trend towards panel downsizing is again in evidence as AIG today (26 September) revealed a 25-strong list of advisers with a view to ultimately reducing that number to as little as single figures.
Phase one of AIG’s Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regional legal panel review – covering AIG’s claims and corporate legal panels for the UK and its nine largest European operations – has seen firms including Linklaters, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, CMS Cameron McKenna, Clyde & Co, DAC Beachcroft and Kennedys reappointed.
‘We have some 68 cases on our books at present, including matters under development in our intelligence section; these include eight Bribery Act projects. We have also charged our first offences under the Bribery Act 2010.’
said David Green speaking at the Cambridge Economic Symposium [on 2 September].
The SFO may have laid its first Bribery Act charges but they were not against a corporate.
Speaking at the symposium Mr Green went on to say:
‘What the SFO does helps to underpin the recovery by attacking criminal corporate behaviour and thereby encouraging good corporate culture. Similarly, foreign bribery undermines civil society, and ultimately harms the poorest most.’
Blah blah blah. Say some.
Over two years old and brought in with huge fanfare and publicity the lack of visible enforcement against a corporate has created a false sense of security among many.
Tensions surrounding the regulation of the various limbs of the legal profession are at an all-time high as this week saw a number of barristers resign from the Bar Standards Board (BSB) disciplinary prosecution panel in protest at the imminent launch of a new quality assurance scheme.
The resignations come in a month that have revealed in more detail than ever the infighting between the various regulatory and representative bodies after the Ministry of Justice called for evidence on how best to regulate the profession going forward.
