The window opens for Addleshaws but only for so long

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One of the biggest mysteries of the UK legal industry since the wipe-out of 2008/09 is whatever happened at Addleshaw Goddard. The firm had a fine pedigree, the best partnership in the North West, a client-base to die for and a credible City merger under its belt in 2003 when it hooked up with Theodore Goddard.

Rivals often point to the lack of an international practice as holding the firm back but there are plenty of firms in its weight class that have performed strongly since 2009 with relatively lean international networks or none at all, among them Macfarlanes, RPC, Stephenson Harwood, Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith.

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A new model, a new game as US firms secure a decisive victory

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‘We’re not a corporate firm, we’re an investors’ firm.’ That simple statement by one partner stood out more than any other during a recent meeting with Ropes & Gray. The point being made was that the firm – and its rapid progress in the City – had not been built on the back of large corporate or investment banking clients – it was focused on a range of sponsors and funds, in particular in private equity and leveraged finance. The same partner stressed the cultural impact on Ropes of being bred in Boston, a major hub for investors and funds, not banks.

As we note in our analysis, ‘The third wave’ as part of our annual Global London report, this approach is driving a new breed of US firms in the City who have proved able to move at unprecedented speed. The second wave of US expansion in London in the late 1990s and early 2000s focused on generalism and targeting corporate and mainstream banking work… and largely ran into a brick wall as such clients remained wedded to their established local advisers.

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Europe’s credit markets – the future is not where it used to be

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Ashurst’s Mark Vickers and Helen Burton assess a seismic shift in Europe’s leveraged debt markets

For many participants in Europe’s leveraged market, 2014 on first impressions heralded something approaching a new normal. According to data from 3i, Debt Management, leverage debt issuance in 2014 reached a total of €150bn; leveraged loan issuance was €78.4bn, the highest volume since 2007; and European high yield had another record-breaking year with total issues of €72bn. The European CLO market performed similarly strongly, raising €14.5bn, the third-strongest year of issuance on record. But behind the semblance of a market re-asserting its momentum, a number of fundamental features are coming together to divert the market’s direction of travel. And these changes have potentially far-reaching implications for law firms engaged in the European leveraged landscape.

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The Last Word: Players old and new

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With the publication of our annual Global London report, leading figures at foreign firms in the City assess their performance and how the market is shaping up.

Fair weather

‘In doing offshore, you become quite a good barometer. My sense is that people feel a lot more confident than two years ago – it’s still quite driven by sectors. We’re almost 50% up on where we were at in 2013, mostly from the finance space. Quite perversely, we’ve slimmed down numbers but grown the book of business.’
Jack Boldarin, London managing partner, Walkers

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Quality, outside scrutiny and Paxman – the LB Awards loom

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Fantastic as I look in a DJ, I wouldn’t say by character I’m a natural awards-type person but I have always said that if you are going to do an awards ceremony, there’s no point unless you do it really well. And doing it well means putting your shoulder to the wheel in the research and judging. Which brings me to the 18th Legal Business Awards, which we will be holding later this month.

While we have traditionally judged the awards internally, it had long been my intention to set up an external judging panel to bring in outside scrutiny and increase the rigour of the process. Though we have always put a lot of effort into drawing up the shortlists and selecting the winners, inevitably having knowledgeable outsiders keeps you on your toes, increases the focus on the process and makes it harder to be swayed by personal bias.

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Life after Sir Nigel – They built it, now what?

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DLA Piper’s new head Simon Levine jokes about avoiding becoming the David Moyes to his high-profile predecessor’s Alex Ferguson, but you could make a stronger case that Sir Nigel Knowles’ transformative track record at DLA Piper is closer to making him the firm’s Tony Blair.

Knowles took over an institution amid a period of upheaval and had to fight to establish his authority, which he duly did with a mix of flair, charisma and vision. Because those qualities – not in abundance in the legal profession at executive level during the 1990s – were supported by astute operational point-men like Andrew Darwin, it proved an incredibly potent formula.

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The case against value – the virtue that can become vice

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It’s the spirit of the age that law firms feel the need to not only deliver better value and efficiency but to be seen to do so by clients.

And what could be wrong with that? The northshoring trend has been increasingly apparent in recent years, with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – the closest to a traditional partnership in the big four – now gearing up for a huge move to Manchester. Clifford Chance, meanwhile, has made much of its efficiency and push to align itself to clients, a stance clear under the leadership of David Childs and even more front-and-centre under Matthew Layton.

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So much for the rule of law – court fees and undermining the City

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Quinn Emanuel disputes veteran Ted Greeno argues that a self-defeating stance on hiking court fees will undermine London

In their piece entitled ‘Strangling the golden goose’ last month, Nigel Boardman, James Shirbin and Andrew Blake of Slaughter and May bemoaned the cost of commercial litigation in England and suggested London’s pre-eminence as a dispute resolution centre might be under threat as a result. In making this argument, they drew upon a report from the World Bank which compared the cost and ease of doing business in 189 countries around the world. One of the activities assessed was enforcing contracts and, for this purpose, the report compares and scores the cost, time and procedures involved in enforcing a claim under a sale of goods contract around the world. The UK is ranked in 36th place, suggesting our courts are relatively uncompetitive.

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The Last Word – The Team Elite

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To coincide with the annual launch of our GC Power List, we asked the City’s most experienced private practitioners: what makes an outstanding in-house legal team?

Eyes and ears

‘A good in-house team has the ear of the commercial client, an understanding of its drivers and the strength to speak out when it is going down the wrong path. Teams should ensure they understand the varied approaches to dispute resolution, adopt appropriate methods in different transactional documentation, and consider mediation as a clean and proactive process for disputes at any stage.’
Katie Bradford, head of property litigation, Linklaters

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Global Law Summit misses the mark and a big opportunity

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Here at Legal Business we like to set the agenda, so we’re feeling ahead of the game in pointing out shortcomings with this month’s Global Law Summit, the government-backed initiative to celebrate the 800-year anniversary of Magna Carta and British traditions of the rule of law.

The event has been attracting mounting controversy, including last month a scatter-gun attack in The Telegraph (who knew that Telegraph Media Group were such staunch socialists?) and wider criticism of elitism (some fair, some not).

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