The last word: Machines and myths

Posted on |
The last word: Machines and myths

‘Everyone is on their own voyage of discovery. But is any law firm leveraging AI in a material way? I don’t think they are – yet.’

Derek Southall, Gowling WLG

Can legal AI match the hype? Legal Business asks key figures about the future for law technology


PUBLICITY KING

‘Of course they’ll have prices, but then you’ll try to work your way around those prices. The reason you’re seeing lots of press releases that say “law firm signs up to use [tech provider] Kira” is because Kira will give you a discount if you do that. Honestly, “law firm uses Kira” isn’t really news, let’s be brutally honest. But Kira will say: “I’ll give you a 10% publicity discount if you do it.” Why not? Why wouldn’t I do that? That then helps Kira to tell a story that says Kira is already being used by Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Freshfields… Suddenly if I’m law firm number 72 and I see all these big law firms, I’m thinking, shit, I’d better use that too.’

Nick West, chief strategy officer, Mishcon de Reya

Continue reading “The last word: Machines and myths”

Sponsored briefing: London calling

Posted on |
Sponsored briefing: London calling

Navigant’s Peter Brooker on how London retains its leading position in international construction dispute resolution

International construction disputes

Whether for commercial litigation or arbitration, London has established a position as one of the leading centres for international construction dispute resolution. The UK Bar and judiciary are generally held in high regard around the world, upholding the highest standards of integrity and independence. English common law is widely used throughout the world and written into many construction contracts. Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: London calling”

As KWM cracks, beware re-written history and schadenfreude

Posted on |
As KWM cracks, beware re-written history and schadenfreude

Happy New Year, profession. Barely have we gotten into 2017 and the inevitable has happened: the legacy SJ Berwin business has entered administration, becoming the largest collapse in European legal history.

From the point last spring that a high-billing Paris private equity team quit for Goodwin Procter, it was hard to see King & Wood Mallesons’ (KWM) European business avoiding a bad outcome. But this comment is not really about KWM’s fate, more about how we try to interpret events and re-write history after the fact. Continue reading “As KWM cracks, beware re-written history and schadenfreude”

There’s value in CMS’ purchase and one big hurdle ahead

Posted on |
There’s value in CMS’ purchase and one big hurdle ahead

In the wake of the eye-catching tie-up of CMS Cameron McKenna, Nabarro and Olswang, Legal Business noted last year that the gnomic messages around the union made it a hard one to judge. And even after a detailed assessment of the largest UK legal merger ever, as we undertake for this month’s cover feature, it’s not easy to put the pieces together. Continue reading “There’s value in CMS’ purchase and one big hurdle ahead”

A buzzword, sure, but one with edge

Posted on |
A buzzword, sure, but one with edge

Macfarlanes’ Charles Martin reviews Heidi Gardner’s much-discussed new book on collaboration in professional services

Collaboration within a law firm is as self-evidently a good thing as motherhood and apple pie. But then you might think the case for global warming is pretty clear too. So, despite the wave of professional recognition Harvard Law School professor Heidi Gardner (pictured) has received for her work on teamworking, her new book, Smart Collaboration, has the considerable challenge of getting lawyers past the outskirts of platitudinal praise and towards the town centre of actual working habits. Continue reading “A buzzword, sure, but one with edge”

Sponsored briefing: Offshore but not off limits

Posted on |
Sponsored briefing: Offshore but not off limits

Navigant’s David Lawler on recent developments in asset-tracing claims

Given the multiplicity of channels available to money launderers and the increasingly sophisticated methods they use to cover their tracks when routing dirty money, claimants in asset-tracing cases face many barriers to recovering funds. Indeed, electronic banking means that funds transfers across borders and through multiple accounts allow fraudsters to quickly and repeatedly splinter assets into sub-accounts, almost instantaneously. They have many ways to hide money, involving webs of credits and debits between banks and intermediaries. Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Offshore but not off limits”

After shocks of 2016, law leaders may need to start thinking

Posted on |

Well, it is nearly over and few in the profession will mourn the passing of 2016. Not since the banking crisis of 2008/09 have 12 months so drastically recast the environment in which law firms ply their trade, most strikingly, of course, in June’s vote for Britain to quit the EU and November’s election of Donald Trump as the 45th US president.

It would be an understatement to say the majority of City lawyers were hoping both votes would go the other way. Now the profession is facing a 2017 as unpredictable and unnerving as 2009 seemed in the aftermath of Lehman’s collapse. That year heralded an unprecedented wave of job cuts and recast the industry. But despite comparable uncertainty, 2017 does not yet look as threatening. Firms remain in their leaner New Normal form and after a tumbleweed prelude to the Brexit vote and a quiet summer, a wave of deal-making has powered many firms as business gets on with investments put on hold.

Continue reading “After shocks of 2016, law leaders may need to start thinking”

What does Mishcon know that your managing partner doesn’t?

Posted on |

It is often rightly noted that law is a conservative old game, as can be gleaned from the identikit strategies of City law firms. Invest in transactional work and international offices, manage your partnership proactively, half-heartedly corporatise the business and hire a load of non-lawyer professionals with dubious mandates. Makes sense right? Except when everyone else does it. Turns out there is a little thing called supply and demand and if you are chasing clients in the same place as everyone else, it is harder to make a buck.

And as the entertaining, buccaneering, bling-styled ascent of Mishcon de Reya illustrates, going your own way can be obscenely good business and fun to boot. Mishcon wanted to change in the 1990s but still decided to stick to what it was good at. Luckily what Mishcon was good at proved to be a licence to print money as disputes, private client and real estate boomed even as larger City law firms looked elsewhere. As ever the most important thing in business and life is being lucky but you don’t move Harvard Business School case studies saying that.

Continue reading “What does Mishcon know that your managing partner doesn’t?”