UK top 50 firm HFW has had a tougher year which saw revenues flatline as profits and profit per equity partner (PEP) tumbled 9% and 11% respectively.
Revenue stagnated, dipping slightly to £178.9m, while profits suffered a more severe decrease to £43.3m. PEP fell from £542,000 last year to £481,000 this year. Continue reading “HFW profits drop 9% as investment costs weigh in ‘tough’ market”
Between the reams of paper (literal and virtual) spent discussing how technology will affect the legal profession and the thousands of legal tech companies springing up around the world, technology is on the minds of in-house teams of all sizes and sectors.
But often what is not communicated is how in-house counsel feel about the technological revolution hitting their profession, and how their teams and businesses have responded, if at all. Continue reading “State of play – In-house tech perspectives”
It never occurred to me to be a lawyer until sixth form. I went to a regular comprehensive school and there wasn’t much career advice. I was a teenager who just wanted to be a footballer or rockstar.
My parents hadn’t been to university. I’m from Nottinghamshire, born in Mansfield. My grandad was a miner and the one thing he wanted was for his son not to be a miner, so my dad imaginatively went to the coal board as an accounts clerk. Continue reading “Life during law: Andy Ryde”
Alex Novarese, Legal Business: Catherine, how much progress are you seeing at law firms in listening to the stuff clients tell them?
Catherine Johnson, London Stock Exchange Group: They listen quite a lot. Whether they act on what they hear is the question for me. One of the areas where I have seen the biggest change is around diversity. Three years ago I sat on a panel for the 30% Club. I was asked, ‘If you want to see diversity on your external legal teams, what amount of pain are you as the client prepared to take?’ I would never expect to hear that comment now. That has been a massive change. They are not doing as well as the accountancy firms, but they are catching up. Continue reading “Heal thyself – Top GCs and firm leaders on the future of law”
Wherever you look, there are women filling legal roles that had previously appeared closed to them in Scotland: Lorna Jack has been chief executive of the Law Society since 2009; Lady Dorrian has been Lord Justice Clerk – the country’s second-most senior judge – since 2016; and Angela Grahame QC has been vice-dean of the Faculty of Advocates for three years, the second woman to hold the role but the first to have been competitively elected to it.
At the same time, practically all the big independent firms are now either led or co-led by a woman, many for the first time in their history. At Brodies, chair Christine O’Neill works alongside managing partner Nick Scott; Burness Paull is co-led by managing partner Tamar Tammes and chair Peter Lawson; while Morton Fraser chair Maggie Moodie manages the firm along with chief executive Chris Harte. Continue reading “Scotland: Art of the possible”
As the associate pay war rages, Thomas Alan finds major firms are falling back on cultural tropes in the expensive jostle for trainee talent
When Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer announced in May a pay hike for newly-qualified salaries, rising from £85,000 to £100,000 with bonuses on top, new battle lines were drawn in the war for junior talent. Continue reading “Prestige, cash and a bit of spin: how to get ahead in trainee recruitment”
There are times in my career as a legal pundit where I’ve gone against trend to argue the unpopular view. This is not going to be one of those columns. Instead, this is about speaking up for a truism that is unusual for being largely true and one that law firm leaders themselves frequently cite. I am here to sing the praises for law firms being more specialised in the practices and markets they cover.
Radical stuff, eh? And yet despite how easily the benefits of specialism fit the rhetoric of managing partners, is there much evidence to suggest that the commercial legal profession as a whole is moving in that direction? Far less than commonly believed. Continue reading “As specialists thrive in law’s Darwinian age too many drift on”
No-one got into journalism to be consistent, the trade typically being more attractive to trouble-makers than those hunting for enduring responsibility. But while hoping that proud tradition continues, in one area the legal media has pushed its licence for hypocrisy that step too far: the debate around law firm profitability.
This over the years has typically resulted in law firms being entreated to do better on all manner of broader concerns one minute… only for the same publications to turn around and berate such institutions for not driving partner profits up to whatever stratospheric figure is deemed appropriate. Don’t bother to send in examples, LB’s done it with the rest. Woe betide the law firms that try to invest or think imaginatively about retaining profits for the middle term. Continue reading “Profit per partner and other enduring hypocrisies”
Judging the world’s largest law firms, it is becoming a familiar tradition after we unpack the results of the Global 100 to look ahead to a more troubled outlook… which then turns into another year of robust growth.
Take 2019’s results, one of the strongest showings since the banking crisis a decade ago, which have seen the group push revenue up 9% to $113.51bn, while profits per equity partner (PEP) across the 100 increased 7% to an average $1.87m. Over a third of firms saw revenues increase by more than 10%, up from 16 in 2016; just four saw declining turnover. While underlining revenue per lawyer once again barely moved upwards, there are now 19 firms with PEP in excess of $3m, all bar one American, and eight exceeding $4m. Continue reading “Global 100 results show US question looming ever more ominously”
Lawyers are a pessimistic bunch by nature and, with the big four Magic Circle firms posting another year of solid but unspectacular revenue and profit per equity partner (PEP) growth, the consensus view is that 2018/19 could have been a lot worse.
Amid a wider slowing of the UK economy and Europe’s deal markets in the face of Brexit and a range of cross-border headwinds, the City’s big four international players posted another year of the moderate results that have defined their post-banking-crisis form. Continue reading “Linklaters leads Magic Circle pack amid solid 2018/19 trading but uncertainty looms over the City elite”
The City offices of progressive US firms continue to set the tone for the London lateral recruitment market – a charge most recently exemplified by Goodwin Procter, which has secured a four-partner technology and life sciences team from Taylor Wessing.
Goodwin hired Malcolm Bates, David Mardle, Tim Worden and Adrian Rainey in a move that makes good on the firm’s promise to build out its City technology and life sciences bench. Mardle started in mid-June, while the remainder will join after completing their respective notice periods. Bates was head of the life sciences practice at Taylor Wessing and advises licensing, collaboration and distribution, manufacturing, outsourcing and R&D projects, as well as contract and patent disputes and regulatory matters. Continue reading “Taylor Wessing quartet boosts flourishing Goodwin City office as O’Melveny losses stack up”
Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) made an ‘offensive move’ against the much-hyped threat of the Big Four on legal operations consulting with the hire of the well-regarded former Barclays head of external engagement, Stéphanie Hamon (pictured).
Hamon, who quit the bank earlier this year, joins as a fee-earner in August to head the new practice and help ‘in-house departments function like a business’. Continue reading “NRF launches legal ops consulting arm with the mind behind Barclays’ radical panel reforms”
With Brexit entrenching divisions, Britain’s patchwork constitution is being increasingly pitted against political upheaval. Do legal experts see crisis brewing?
Britain has developed an uncharacteristically laid-back attitude to constitutional change, with once-rare reforms to the UK’s ad hoc democratic settlement coming at a startling pace in recent years. The previous Labour administration ushered in varying degrees of devolution in Scotland and Wales, before in 2003 pulling the UK’s highest court out of the House of Lords and into the new Supreme Court (tacked on was reform of the Lord Chancellor’s historic role). The process of further EU integration under the Maastricht Treaty, not to mention Labour’s 1998 Human Rights Act, which gave domestic force to the European Convention on Human Rights, also had significant impact. Continue reading “Brexit vs Dicey – The constitutional lawyer’s view on these strange days”
Thomas Alan assesses the early financial results in a tougher year for the UK’s chasing pack
The latest financial results from the UK’s mid-table firms show a more challenging economic environment is producing a lag on growth in the domestic market, as firms look to Europe to continue Brexit-proofing their growth. Continue reading “Challenging Brexit headwinds force City middleweights to look to Europe for growth”
Hamish McNicol reports on Eversheds Sutherland taking the partnership shackles off its Konexo offering
The alternative legal service provider (ALSP) market is estimated to be worth more than $10bn annually. Research led by Thomson Reuters, called Alternative Legal Service Providers 2019: Fast Growth, Expanding Use and Increasing Opportunity, found that the revenue generated from ALSPs had grown to that amount in 2017, up 13% from an estimated $8.4bn a couple of years earlier. Continue reading “Eversheds spins off New Law arm to supercharge growth and attract external investment”
Anna Cole-Bailey rounds up the latest senior corporate in-house moves
A string of general counsel (GCs) have made career changes of late, including high-profile names such as the long-serving Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) European legal chief Sajid Hussein and Rio Tinto GC Philip Richards. Continue reading “‘Time for a change’ as multiple corporate legal chiefs leave posts for pastures new”
The leadership of Slaughter and May’s Italian ally, BonelliErede, claims the firm has moved far ahead of its competitors after the recent takeover of litigation and corporate independent, Lombardi e Associati.
In a significant move for a market traditionally used to schisms, the merger – effective from July – sees Bonelli strengthen its position as the largest of the country’s three champions, growing its lawyer headcount by 70 to more than 500. Continue reading “Italian legal market consolidates as local champion Bonelli merges with rival Lombardi”
Eversheds Sutherland has chosen one of the most competitive legal markets for its first US office launch since its transatlantic union went live just over two years ago.
The firm in June opened its seventh US base in Chicago, home to strong Global 100 players Sidley Austin and Mayer Brown, and the world’s highest-grossing firm, Kirkland & Ellis. The focus will initially be on real estate, M&A and litigation, targeting the diversified industrials, technology, media and telecoms, financial institutions and energy sectors. Continue reading “Eversheds launches in Chicago and dreams of California in first post-merger US moves”
Slaughter and May and Clifford Chance (CC) are representing the City elite on a £4.8bn offer for Merlin Entertainments, in a deal that brought together a line-up of heavy hitters with Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins also fielding veteran partners.
The deal was announced on 28 June with Merlin, which is being advised by Slaughters, agreeing the terms of a recommended offer. The acquiring consortium comprises Kirkbi – the investment vehicle for Lego’s founding family – alongside private equity houses The Blackstone Group and the CPP Investment Board (CPPIB). Continue reading “City and US heavyweights line up on Lego owner’s £4.8bn offer for Merlin”
