Resetting associate comp – Better to bend than break but a rethink is still overdue

Posted on |
Resetting associate comp – Better to bend than break but a rethink is still overdue

While it’s surprising in some regards that it took this long, Allen & Overy has done the UK legal market a favour by substantially re-setting compensation bands for its junior lawyers. The move, confirmed on Monday (22 June), will see starting salaries and bonuses for newly-qualified lawyers in London fall from the current benchmark of £100,000 to £90,000 for the intake starting in September.

Clifford Chance later that week announced more modest cuts from £100,000 to £94,500 for salary and bonus, while Slaughter and May had already pushed down its starting base salary to £87,000 for autumn starters, from £92,000. Continue reading “Resetting associate comp – Better to bend than break but a rethink is still overdue”

Kirkland vs Covid-19 – How the world’s largest law firm handles this crisis will define it… and the global elite

Posted on |
Kirkland vs Covid-19 – How the world’s largest law firm handles this crisis will define it… and the global elite

For journalists, ill winds usually bring a few benefits, not least that readers have greater interest in what we’re churning out. But while it’s a good time for industry anoraks to get the attention they crave, it’s not the pieces I’ve done in 2020 on crisis, coronavirus or even Black Lives Matter that have attracted the biggest audience. The most read was an article from March focused on the two-horse race between the world’s largest law firms, Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins, and its wider relevance for the high-end legal market.

That speaks to the extraordinary interest among peers in Kirkland, which has defied expectations to batter its way to the top of the global market in the last decade, much to the startled unease of traditional elites in New York and London. Continue reading “Kirkland vs Covid-19 – How the world’s largest law firm handles this crisis will define it… and the global elite”

Comment: Letter from New York – Assessing the world’s top law hub now and after the crisis

Posted on |
Comment: Letter from New York – Assessing the world’s top law hub now and after the crisis

Regular readers are familiar with our custom of penning ‘Letters from…’ when we’ve spent time in a major city and want to offer some observations and commentary on that legal market. We’re not travelling. That can mean only one thing: Time for us to compose a ‘Letter from New York.’

Let’s start with some data, shall we? Continue reading “Comment: Letter from New York – Assessing the world’s top law hub now and after the crisis”

Comment: A triumph of hope over experience – Lateral hiring needs an upgrade for the post-Covid era

Posted on |
Comment: A triumph of hope over experience – Lateral hiring needs an upgrade for the post-Covid era

Law firm leaders are getting restless. They are beginning to look past Covid-19 to what comes next. Even if finances remain a concern, there are fewer ‘unknown unknowns’. The process for getting people back to the office is mapped out. Huge uncertainties and challenges remain, but a way forward is emerging. The question now is: how to regain momentum and rally the troops?

A key part of any proactive strategy will likely include lateral hiring. It’s striking that a steady trickle of strategic hires has continued during the coronavirus crisis. Expect that trickle to become a gush by early 2021. And whether your firm is calling potential partners, other firms are calling yours. Continue reading “Comment: A triumph of hope over experience – Lateral hiring needs an upgrade for the post-Covid era”

Comment: Falling stock – DWF’s predictable woes will hang over the listed legal sector for years

Posted on |
Comment: Falling stock – DWF’s predictable woes will hang over the listed legal sector for years

It’s fair to say that Legal Business has long been sceptical of the prospects for listed UK law firms, and none more so than the most hyped of the lot, DWF. ‘The 2020s still look likely to end with public markets as a marginal force in global law,’ noted our recent cover feature on the big issues set to shape the profession through the current decade. And that assessment was written before the coronavirus pandemic, a jolt that is about to put the weaknesses of the listed law firm model to a savage test.

So in this context the news on Friday (29 May), that the UK’s largest listed law firm DWF was dispensing with the services of its long-term leader Andrew Leaitherland amid pressure on its business is both surprising and yet much foreshadowed. Continue reading “Comment: Falling stock – DWF’s predictable woes will hang over the listed legal sector for years”

Comment: After their lost decade, the current crisis should see the Magic Circle back on world-beating form

Posted on |
Comment: After their lost decade, the current crisis should see the Magic Circle back on world-beating form

Sometimes a shock looks certain to leave life forever changed only for things to carry on much as normal. Sometimes, the jolt marks a genuine crack in the foundations underpinning industries, business and society. We now know that for the profession and the City, the banking crisis proved very much in the latter camp. In law, the most visible result of this was the end of the startling 25-year success story of the Magic Circle, closing the period in which the group had blazed a trail across the global market and become utterly dominant in their core European and Asian heartlands.

After the banking crisis, growth slowed, ground was ceded to US rivals, and even some mid-tier rivals, and the group lost much of the strategic daring that defined their remarkable ascent. They remained successful institutions but the swagger was gone, the myth of invincibility lost. Continue reading “Comment: After their lost decade, the current crisis should see the Magic Circle back on world-beating form”

‘Stay home, save jobs’ – How the legal elite are charting a course through half-lockdown summer

Posted on |
‘Stay home, save jobs’ – How the legal elite are charting a course through half-lockdown summer

Try driving across London or walking its crowded parks in sunny May and it becomes hard to remember that the nation, and much of the Western world, exists in a state of at least semi-lockdown.

While food queues and the inability to do much beyond kick around the house testifies that things are far from normal, since the government in early May started obtusely unwinding the lockdown, the business and legal worlds have entered an ambiguous chapter of the coronavirus saga. Continue reading “‘Stay home, save jobs’ – How the legal elite are charting a course through half-lockdown summer”

Comment: Welcome back to the office? Re-thinking law’s real estate for the post-corona age

Posted on |

If we can already make a few forecasts about some aspects of the post-coronavirus world, currently pole position among things the legal industry abruptly realised will look radically different as of ten weeks ago are large-scale, grand, frightfully-expensive offices. It turns out that we were all used to the modern, shiny, flagship office and now realise we had only the most tenuous grasp of why we believed it so fundamental to the business of professional services all along.

Yet the office will never be the same. Continue reading “Comment: Welcome back to the office? Re-thinking law’s real estate for the post-corona age”

Comment: Law firm leaders already know a lot about the post-Corona world but dare they take advantage?

Posted on |
Comment: Law firm leaders already know a lot about the post-Corona world but dare they take advantage?

What we do not know about the surreal period we’re in thanks to the coronavirus pandemic would fill the proverbial book for law firm leaders, or actually several. I won’t presume to speak to medical/scientific issues, desperate as we are to have some clarity; I’m sticking with the economic/business/strategic issues.

What we don’t know, or don’t know with any degree of confidence, are: Continue reading “Comment: Law firm leaders already know a lot about the post-Corona world but dare they take advantage?”