Marco Cillario assesses whether Nextlaw is a network or Dentonsʼ Uber
With typical distaste for the status quo, Dentons chair Joe Andrew last year described the launch of Nextlaw Global Referral Network as the beginning of the end for traditional law firm networks. The new platform, conceived and paid for by Dentons, differed from other networks in not charging membership fees and being open to any number of members globally.
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Revenue at Dentons’ continental European arm grew 11% to €275.8m in the year to 31 December 2016, according to LLP accounts published this week.
In a year marked by five office launches and 32 lateral hires, the global giant’s continental operations also saw profits increase 13% to €72.3m, up from €64.2m in 2015.
The results mean the continental European LLP, which includes the legacy Salans business, accounted for around 15% of the firm’s $2.2bn global turnover last year.
More than 70% of mainland Europe revenue came from Dentons’ German, French, Russian and Polish offices.
France and Russia recorded a flat performance and Poland a 4% drop. However, revenue across the firm’s three German bases grew 23%.
Speaking to Legal Business, Europe chief operating officer Richard Singer pointed to the new Munich office, launched in June with three partners from Norton Rose Fulbright , and the growth of work handled from Berlin and Frankfurt due to a fast-growing German economy.
He also described the strong performance of the Milan operation as the reason behind the firm’s launch in Rome last autumn.
Dentons also launched in Luxembourg through a merger with local firm OPF Partners and in Georgia with the hire of two DLA partners.
Singer said the European results showed ‘the Dentons idea is working’, noting the increase in cross-border and cross-regional operations, both between European countries and from outside the continent.
European work highlights include advising Liberty Global on its $800m acquisition of Polish operator Multimedia Polska and acting on the Polish and Romanian aspects of the €2.4bn sale of property company P3 Logistic Parks from TPG Real Estate and Ivanhoe Cambridge to Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC.
According to Singer, the 32 partners the firm hired in 2016 made an immediate impact on performance, adding that 80% of them had already delivered on the business targets agreed at the time of joining the firm.
The firm has also worked to improve efficiency. In November last year, it launched a business service centre in Warsaw in a joint initiative with its UKMEA operations.
‘The centre is helping us doing things faster and in a less expensive way,’ he said, adding that the process towards more efficiency included a closer collaboration between the firm’s 25 continental offices spread across 19 countries.
While historically the legacy firms which combined to form Dentons Europe were managed at an office level and practices were not harmonised, Singer spoke of a drive towards increasing integration and efficiency that would allow the firm to benefit from economies of scale. The plan will be fully implemented in 2019. He added Dentons Europe had recorded double-digit growth in both revenues and profits in the first eight months of 2017 and he expected a stronger performance at the end of the year.
‘France, Germany, Poland and Russia are recording year-on-year growth, and that was not the case in previous years,’ he concluded.
Dentons is to embark on another chapter of its global expansion by entering Uganda through a merger with the African country’s largest law firm, Kampala Associated Advocates (KAA).
As 2017 marks a return to acquisition mode after a quieter 2016, the firm will add yet another new member to its global network, bringing 26-lawyer KAA under the Dentons brand.
Global chairman Joe Andrew described Denton’s fourth merger in 2017 as part of its goal to be ‘the first truly pan-African law firm’.
Pending approval by both firms’ partnerships, the combination will give Dentons a base and 12 partners in East Africa. It adds to the firm’s presence in Egypt, Morocco and South Africa, and means Dentons now has more than 8,500 lawyers in 158 locations across 66 countries.
‘With this combination we are truly poised to become one of the leading and fastest-growing firms in Africa. It’s our goal to be the first truly pan-African law firm, through a blend of full-firm combinations and our well-known network,’ said Andrew.
KAA managing Partner David Mpanga said the tie-up ‘will enable us to maintain our deep connections in the local community while embracing and building upon the attributes of the firm that helped us become one of the elite in East Africa’.
Contacted by Legal Business, a spokesperson for Dentons confirmed the merger is to go live by the end of the year and the firm expects KAA to retain all its lawyers as it starts operating under the new brand.
The announcement comes a few weeks before Denton’s UK merger with Scottish law firm Maclay Murray & Spens goes live.
Also this year, Dentons combined with Dutch law firm Boekel in March and with Monterrey-based Canales Zambrano y Asociados at the start of the year.
In May, the firm launched in Georgia , taking on a team of 11 lawyers from DLA Piper in Tblisi, and opened its second office in Saudi Arabia alongside Riyhad with a launch in Jeddah.
Dentons is also expanding its global coverage through its Nextlaw referral network, which now includes both law firms and public affairs businesses.
Marco.cillario@legalbusiness.co.uk
For more on Dentons strategy and global playbook, read ‘The pitch – A new kind of global law firm emerges but can Dentons live up to the hype?’
It has already made a much-hyped move into the referral network game, now the headline-grabbing Dentons is plotting another iconoclastic move by extending its Nextlaw group to cover public affairs advisers across the world.
The 8,000-lawyer giant today (12 September) unveiled the launch of what it calls the Nextlaw Global Public Affairs Network, having signed up 60 organisations spanning 100 countries.
The move is touted as the next stage in the development of the Nextlaw legal referral network that officially launched last year. The parent network now boasts 475 law firm members, according to Dentons making it the largest such club in the world.
As with the original network, the public affairs spin-off will charge no fees to members and will help law firms work with organisations on matters including lobbying, government and media relations, in what Dentons global chairman Joe Andrew described as a ‘natural synergy between the legal and public affairs professions’.
Open to any public affairs business in any part of the world, it will use the same technology and platform as the legal referral network and provide members of the latter with a database to refer clients to. It will also offer the possibility to join forces for integrated service.
Paul Hatch, chief executive of Nextlaw Global Public Affairs Network, told Legal Business that the launch followed the ‘realisation that a lot of legal problems are susceptible to solutions out of the courts and this often involves public affairs’.
He said Dentons was not looking to directly monetise the network but hoped to improve its service to clients, as well as deepening relationships with organisations and law firms across the world.
Member organisations so far include Portland Communications, Hill + Knowlton Strategies and FTI Consulting, along with a number of medium and small public affairs shops.
‘The public affairs industry is highly fragmented, and in the current environment it’s a challenge for many clients to easily and efficiently manage complex projects on a global scale,’ added Dentons chief executive Elliott Portnoy (pictured). ‘It’s an industry dominated by a few huge firms, with many smaller firms filling niches. We’re changing all that.’
The launch of the lobbying network is the latest chapter in Dentons’ efforts to juice up its brand by two core tactics: pursuing unprecedented scale on the back of aggressive consolidation and fostering a reputation for experimenting with the legal business model.
The firm introduced Nextlaw Labs in 2015 to develop, deploy and invest in new technologies and processes for the legal profession. The global referral network was launched the following year, along with a verbal broadside directed at traditional ‘pay-to-play’ referral groupings.
Dentons has once again been expanding globally during 2017 after a relatively quiet 2016. In July, the firm’s UKMEA branch merged with Glasgow-bred Maclay Murray & Spens, bringing its total UK lawyer count to over 800 and ushering what was historically one of Scotland’s largest law firms into the Dentons fold.
Also this year, Dentons combined with Dutch practice Boekel and Monterrey-based Canales Zambrano y Asociados. Other ventures this year have included expansion in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.
The largest firm in the world by fee earners, with around 8,000 lawyers, it is the sixth firm in the Legal Business Global 100 table based on revenues.
Opinion in the profession remains sharply-divided on Dentons with some peers admiring its strategic daring, while a larger group argues that its hastily-assembled empire is built on sand. Either way, the empire keeps on expanding.
International law firms have returned from the summer break in acquisition mode, with Berwin Leighton Paisner, Bird & Bird, Taylor Wessing, Reed Smith and Pinsent Masons all hiring in London and Asia, while Sidley, Dentons and Osborne Clarke are expanding their continental European footprint.
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) has this morning (11 September) announced the appointment of three new international disputes partners to further strengthen its litigation and corporate risk (LCR) practice.
George Burn joins BLP from Vinson & Elkins as head of international arbitration later this month, while Gavin Margetson, formerly of Herbert Smith Freehills, has been hired to lead the firm’s regional arbitration hub in Singapore. Based in London, Richard Chalk is an international disputes and investigations partner, who was previously at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London and Hong Kong.
BLP global head of LCR Nathan Willmott said these appointments are a direct result of a recent LCR strategy review. ‘The strategy review was an important milestone for us as a department. With so many of the team involved, it’s meant our future really is a collective effort. These hires all demonstrate our intent to get on with the job and start delivering on a global scale’.
Bird & Bird has added to its equity capital market capabilities with the hire of Clive Hopewell and Adam Carling from Charles Russell Speechlys (CRS).
Hopewell will lead the practice expansion in London, building on the Middle East contacts made while heading CRS’s operations in Bahrain. Speaking to Legal Business, he said: ‘Bird & Bird has a very substantial presence in Europe, Asia and Australia. The firm has an established office in Abu Dhabi and an established presence in Dubai. I’ll go there two or three times a year to help introduce them to clients.’
Carling has experience in Africa and has advised on mining deals on the continent. Neil Blundell, head of Bird & Bird’s London corporate group, said the hires would ‘further increase our reputation in the mining and oil and gas sectors’.
Meanwhile, Taylor Wessing turned to Paul Hastings to bring Mark Rajbenbach into its real estate team.
Keith Barnett, head of real estate at the firm – which now has more than 60 lawyers in its core London real estate group and more than 100 working on real estate across the London base – said the addition of Rajbenbach was ‘very exciting for our team, particularly in corporate real estate and the hotels area’.
Rajbenbach was at SJ Berwin & Co before joining Paul Hastings, and his clients have included Invesco Real Estate, Starwood Capital, Evans Randall, Hilton, London & Regional, Schroders and RRAM Energy.
Elsewhere, Reed Smith has hired Leith Moghli as a partner in its global private equity and investment funds practice in London. Moghli left Kirkland & Ellis in April, where he had been a salaried partner since October 2014 in the funds practice.
Pinsent Masons has appointed Chris Richardson to lead its new forensic accounting service (FAS). He joins the firm after 16 years in the fraud investigations team at EY.
In Brussels, Sidley Austin has hired Wim Nauwelaerts from Hunton & Williams. Nauwelaerts advises on EU and international data protection and privacy compliance, including preparation for the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
He told Legal Business: ‘Sidley Austin is one of the prominent firms in Brussels and I am very excited about the prospect of expanding their global data protection practice.’
Also in Europe, Dentons strengthened its M&A and capital markets practices with the addition of Shaohui Zhang, who joins as head of the China desk in Luxembourg from Allen & Overy, and Antonella Brambilla in the corporate and M&A practice in Milan from local firm Chiomenti.
Dentons Italy managing partner Federico Sutti told Legal Business: ‘In Italy we see signs of recovery in equity capital markets. Antonella has the standing and the experience to allow Dentons to play a role in this in the near future.’
Finally, Osborne Clarke has announced the opening of a new office in Stockholm, led by Fredrik von Baumgarten and Henrik Bergström. Von Baumgarten joins from his own firm Baumgarten Byström Rooth & Partners and was previously a partner at Nordic firms Hannes Snellman and Vinge, while Bergström was previously at Bird & Bird.
Simon Beswick, international chief executive at Osborne Clarke, said: ‘Not only is Sweden the third most active M&A market in Europe and growing faster than most other European economies, it’s a key market for many of our core sector clients.’
The Sweden office means the firm now has 25 international bases in Europe and Asia.
Dentons is to combine with Scottish firm Maclay Murray & Spens, embarking on the latest phase of its European expansion into Scotland’s oil and gas markets and bringing its total UK lawyers to over 800.
The merger is the latest in a series for the Dentons, the world’s largest law firm by number of fee earners, as it adds three more offices in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dentons’ European offices will total 31 on completion of the deal.
Maclays partners and Dentons UKMEA partners have approved the takeover, which will add 196 lawyers and 62 partners to Dentons UK operations, bringing its partner figure in the UK to 198.
The deal awaits the go-ahead from Dentons global partnership, expected in three weeks. Maclays will then operate under the Dentons brand.
The Scottish firm focuses on financial services, energy, transport and real estate. The two firms also share clients in the banking sector including RBS, Lloyds Banking Group and Santander and are both on the panel of transport company Network Rail.
Dentons UKMEA CEO Jeremy Cohen told Legal Business that the strong practice fit between the two firms and the opportunities to service clients ‘much more seamlessly’ north and south of the border were the main factors in the merger.
‘The office in Aberdeen gives us the opportunity to have a presence in Europe’s leading oil and gas centre,’ Cohen said.
Maclays advised Aberdeen Asset Management on its merger with Standard Life in March 2017, which valued the Scottish fund manager at £3.8bn. He also mentioned the firm’s clients in the whisky sector, which is ‘mostly served and consumed outside Scotland’, as other potential beneficiaries of the merger. They include the Edrington Group and Inver House Distillers.
Maclays CEO Kenneth Shand (pictured with Cohen) told Legal Business: ‘The merged entity is the sort of organisation that operates globally and we will be able to provide a better service for them as part of Dentons.’
This is the third merger this year for Dentons, after it combined with Dutch law firm Boekel in March and with Monterrey-based Canales Zambrano y Asociados at the start of the year. In May, the firm launched in Georgia, taking on a team of 11 lawyers from DLA Piper in Tblisi, and opened its second office in Saudi Arabia alongside Riyhad with a launch in Jeddah.
The firm also recently announced plans to form an alliance with Brazilian firm Vella Pugliese Buosi Guidoni, which will give Dentons access to 13 partners and 116 fee-earners in São Paulo and Brasília.
Denton’s UKMEA financial results in 2016/17 revealed a 9% fall in profit per equity partner (PEP) to £481,000 and a modest 1% increase in revenue to £166.4m.
Dentons has taken the lead advising French oil and gas company Total in signing a £4bn ($5bn) contract with Iran’s national Oil company, the republic’s first energy deal with a foreign enterprise since sanctions eased 18 months ago.
The Dentons UKMEA and Europe teams acting for Total were led by Paris-based partner Ramin Hariri and London-based partner Alistair Black with support from partners Charles Wood and Andrew Cheung.
Total will work on the development of one of the largest offshore gas fields in the world, to supply the Iranian domestic market from 2021 with a capacity of 400,000 barrels a day.
The French company will have a 50.1% stake in the project. Petropars, a fully-owned subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), will hold a 19.9% interest and Chinese state-owned oil and gas company CNPC 30%.
Total is a longstanding client of Dentons. In 2014, Dentons advised Total on $48.1m UK shale gas licences at a time when the unconventional method of extracting shale gas was becoming more widespread a phenomenon in the UK. Total was the first major oil company to invest in UK shale.
The Chinese oil company and NIOC were advised by internal lawyers.
The deal is the first long-term agreement the Islamic Republic of Iran has signed since it negotiated a 2015 plan with China, France, Russia, the UK, US and EU to end its military nuclear programme in exchange for relaxing sanctions. This took effect from January 2016.
In 2015, Total cut its legal panel roster to increase price competition between law firms.
The reluctance of banks to be involved with money coming from and going to Iran remains an issue for potential investors in the area, but Legal Business understands Total had sufficient cash flow to be able to invest in the project without requiring additional funds in the initial phases.
Dentons has revealed the 2016/17 financial results for its UK, Middle East and Africa (UKMEA) LLP, showing a 9% fall in profit per equity partner (PEP) in the region to £481,000 and a modest 1% increase in revenue to £166.4m. A year ago, PEP was £530,000 and revenue £165m.
The performance, which covers the firm’s operations in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, London, Milton Keynes, Muscat, Riyadh, Tashkent and Watford, means Dentons’ profitability in the region was back to levels before a 2014/15 surge, when PEP passed £500,000 with a 23% increase on the previous year to £502,000. In 2015/16, profits rose again by 5%.
Speaking to Legal Business, Jeremy Cohen, Dentons’ CEO for the UKMEA (pictured), admitted the firm would have ‘preferred to have a better profitability’ and pointed to a ‘fairly flat year’ in the UK market along with a number of investments as reasons for the fall in profit.
‘We had a more difficult UK market this year: work in the transactional practice was quite volatile after Brexit and went through quite a lot of ups and downs during the year. It is not that all trade stopped, it was a series of up and downs reflecting the general uncertainty.’
On the transactional side, the corporate team completed a number of cross-border transactions, with clients including KKR, Total and Indonesia’s national oil company Pertamina. The contentious practice also had a strong year, with Cohen claiming Dentons represented ‘more FTSE 100 companies than any other firm’.
Cohen also praised the firm’s 18 appointments to global panels with a significant UK component over the course of the year. In England, Dentons was one of the 12 firms appointed to tier one of the Central Government General Legal Services panel in March.
Dentons’ UKMEA operation, which counts 505 lawyers, took on 15 new partners, including 11 laterals, bringing the total to 161. ‘Generally when we hire partners from other firms there is a period when the team needs to build up, so it is not surprising that in the first year we do not have the revenue kick we expect,’ Cohen said.
Recent hires include real estate experts Rob Thompson, Lewis Myers, Rupert Dowdell and Jayne Schnider, who joined the London real estate practice from Irwin Mitchell. Former Olswang patent prosecution group co-chair Justin Hill also joined Dentons as his former firm prepared for its three-way merger with CMS Cameron McKenna and Nabarro.
marco.cillario@legalbusiness.co.uk
A former US Dentons associate is facing a criminal complaint of extortion against the firm after allegedly threatening to leak confidential information to a US legal blog unless Dentons paid him $210,000.
Michael Potere was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in June following allegations by Dentons that he downloaded confidential files and emails used in an attempt to extort money from the firm, according to an affidavit filed in the Central District Court of California.
Potere was charged with interference with commerce by threats or violence under section 18 of U.S. Code 1951.
The Los Angeles-based former associate, who left the firm on 1 June, was accused of accessing the documents after the firm rejected his request to continue working with Dentons up until he began a graduate degree in political science in the autumn. He was allegedly told his last day at the firm would be June 1, having joined in 2015
The documents were reportedly obtained from a senior partner’s email account, to which Potere had been granted access while the pair were both working on a case.
The affidavit states that he then took the documents and, in a series of meetings with partners, threatened to leak the files and emails to US legal blog ‘Above The Law’, unless Denton met his demand of $210,000 and a piece of artwork near his office.
The affidavit states that Potere installed software on his computer that would automatically send the documents to the blog if the demands were not met by a certain date. Discussing his reasons for his actions, documents state that Potere told two partners at the firm ‘people his age were getting “screwed” and that hypothetically he might have a chance to “screw back”.’
A UK spokesperson declined to comment by press time but in a separate statement in media reports said that the firm would cooperate with law enforcement and it was ‘very appreciative of the highly professional and diligent nature with which the FBI and the United States Attorney’s office have conducted their investigation’.
Dentons has taken on Clifford Chance’s (CC) Russia and CIS oil and gas head Louis Skyner as partner, the second practice leader to be poached from the Magic Circle firm this month.
Skyner’s clients include as Lukoil, Rosneft, Gazprom Neft, Shell, and Mubadala Petroleum.
English qualified, Skyner advises energy clients across a broad range of legal issues, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, project development, structuring and financing.
Skyner joined CC in 2013 from multinational oil and gas company Statoil, where he was a leading legal counsel for upstream projects with its Russian partners. These included the development of the Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea, various offshore and onshore oil exploration projects with Rosneft, and the West Qurna II oil field development in Iraq. He has also served as senior legal counsel at Petroleum Geo-Services and for the Russian government.
Dentons Russia managing partner Florian Schneider said: ‘Louis brings more than a decade of experience in Russia and CIS and an extensive client portfolio, including many of the top energy companies in the region. We are delighted to welcome him onboard.’
Dentons built on its Eastern European presences in March, picking up DLA Piper’s office in Tbilisi. The firm took on a team of 11 lawyers, including partners Otar Kipshidze and Avto Svanidze who joined the firm at the beginning of this month. The team specialises in litigation, corporate, banking and finance, intellectual property, energy, infrastructure and government work.
Earlier this month, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan picked up CC tax investigations and disputes head Liesl Fichardt, who specialises in advising clients on complex tax investigations and enquiries.
Before joining CC in 2013, Fichardt headed up Berwin Leighton Paisner’s tax disputes practice and was previously a partner at US firm Dorsey & Whitney.
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk
Read more: ‘The pitch – A new kind of global law firm emerges but can Dentons live up to the hype?‘
