There are lots of factors that are supposed to have a major role in the success of a law firm that on closer examination are hard to sustain. Issues in this camp include remuneration models, culture, strategy and a specific practice mix. What this list has in common is that there is no right answer – all that matters is what you are doing is appropriate to what you are trying to achieve and the markets that you are working in (and even then it’s less central than supposed). You can be lockstep, eat-what-you kill, collegial or aggressive – it works for some and flops for others. Just look at the extent that the Magic Circle has elevated one particular model of lockstep into some half-baked sacred tenant, with disastrous consequences.
What a ‘combination’! Dentons Dacheng pushes the concept of a firm
In January 2005 DLA Piper hooked up with US duo Piper Rudnick and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, triggering a debate that looks no more resolved as I type these words in January 2015. The issue boils down to: what is a firm? And can unions between legal practices maintaining separate finances, partnerships and governance be considered by clients, staff, peers and regulators to be a single institution?
The debate has only become more intense given the string of verein-based tie-ups since 2009. Hard and fast rules are elusive. In reality some – notably Hogan Lovells and in recent years DLA Piper – operate as a single institution. But with some other firms, discerning the nature of the merger, sorry ‘combination’ – the word increasingly bandied around to reconcile these conflicting realities – is a challenge.
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Strangling the golden goose – English law needs reform
Slaughter and May’s Nigel Boardman, James Shirbin and Andrew Blake argue that English law needs drastic reform to remain internationally competitive
English law occupies a privileged position. Thanks in significant part to the City’s role as a major global financial centre, England has become the jurisdiction of choice for many enterprises and deals (and subsequent disputes) that may otherwise have little territorial connection to the UK. The primary beneficiaries of this happy arrangement have been London’s major commercial law firms, who have received a steady flow of major transactional and litigious work.
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New year, new privacy and security strategy
PwC Legal’s Stewart Room argues that 2015 is the year for companies and advisers to stop the denial of the realities of cyber security
New year is traditionally the time to change our ways. As we reflect back on the year just gone, perhaps we see that an inch has gone on to the waistline, or we’re more out of breath as we run for the train, or the savings have diminished even further. All good prompts to change our ways and come up with new life strategies?
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A crisis in law but not the one many claim
Akin Gump restructuring veteran James Roome argues those seeing a threat to the legal industry have mis-read the markets
Ever since the start of the financial crisis you haven’t had to look very far to find expert opinion pieces predicting the end of growth for law firms. The observer will tell you that this is because of the commoditisation of transactional services, the pressure of client expectations of price, staffing and delivery, new entrants in the market, cyclical downturns in the economy, challenging career paths, anti-social hours and so on.
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Dissent, it turns out, comes at a price even in disputes
Joe Tirado argues that dissenting opinions in arbitration are a double-edged sword
There are many so-called ‘hot’ topics in international arbitration that could have been the subject of this article, but ultimately the topic chose itself.
In arbitration, a dissenting opinion is a written statement that an arbitrator can make to express their disagreement with the award or the reasoning for it. It does not form part of the award. Nor is it a separate award. Under most arbitration legislation, it does not prevent the award from being final or from being an award.
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The Last Word: Done deals
With confidence in the M&A market slowly returning, the City M&A elite reflects on a positive year and give their prognosis for deal activity in 2015.
Fragile confidence
‘With the value of M&A activity hitting $3.7trn for 2014 and M&A activity increasing in almost every sector of the economy, confidence returned in spades last year and was the result of strategies adopted by companies since the financial crisis.
‘I expect the high value of deals to continue in 2015, but a combination of factors – including the general election in May, the price of oil and the effect of geopolitical risks on business confidence – make me wary of predicting another record year.’
David Patient, managing partner, Travers Smith
Legal Business celebrates 25 years and the profession as well
So, what mattered to you? Twenty five years since Legal Business launched to chronicle the dramatic changes in the legal profession much has changed and yet stays the same. Still, if you were going to launch the first publication to focus on the UK’s commercial legal sector, you couldn’t have picked a better time than 1990.
That decade was an incredible time for the profession. Primed by the twin forces of London’s Big Bang and the equally explosive phenomenon of the newly-merged Clifford Chance (CC), the 1990s had the lot: globalisation, drama, ambition, innovation, mergers, disaggregation, technology, accountants and DLA. Destinies were won and lost. By the end of the decade the profession was different. CC stands out – someone with a longer attention span than I should write a book on the firm in that era – it was an incredible institution, without question then the world’s most influential law firm. Continue reading “Legal Business celebrates 25 years and the profession as well”
The profession – our part in its downfall
In our 25-year anniversary coverage, Cass Business School’s Laura Empson repeats a familiar refrain about the negative impact of the legal media on the profession’s values in creating league tables, particularly those on the profitability of law firms.
There is nothing new about assertions that such rankings inflicted a huge cost to the ethos of the profession, stoking excess, greed and a culture of mobile stars. Legal Business is arguably the most directly responsible since it was the publication that in 1992 brought law firm financial rankings to the UK.
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The national market – brutally competitive but opportunity abounds
At one point in our Regional Insight report – a major collaboration with our colleagues at The Legal 500 included with this issue of Legal Business – one GC based in the North West discusses a recent pitch in which a City law firm came out best on price against regional rivals. Surprising as it may seem, it is reflective of a dynamic that has seen London advisers focus on handling work from UK regions after realising that simply aspiring to be a City leader is a road to nowhere for many firms.
This shift in focus comes with the acknowledgement that post-Lehman, demand for external law firm services in the UK has become more polarised. The need for high-end transactional and disputes advice still exists but is increasingly now the preserve of the elite firms in those fields in London. At the opposite end, in-house teams are retaining more work and will only outsource work to law firms if it is cost effective.
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