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Global expansion: Fieldfisher picks Dublin for seventh office launch in a year

Dublin

Fieldfisher continues to build on what managing partner Michael Chissick describes as a strategy to be ‘in every commercial capital in Europe’, having opened in Dublin – its seventh new office since the beginning of 2018.

The mid-market pacesetter merged on 1 May with Irish firm McDowell Purcell to add the 25th office to its global verein. Led by managing partner JP McDowell, the 120-year-old firm counts 16 partners and 50 lawyers. Its regulatory practice is its core strength, while also operating in disputes, employment, planning, restructuring and insolvency. Continue reading “Global expansion: Fieldfisher picks Dublin for seventh office launch in a year”

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Market Report: Employment – The toughest gig in town

Sarah Henchoz

As #MeToo continues to shine an uncomfortable light on many industries, Anna Cole-Bailey looks at how its influence on employment litigation in firms is likely to come into full swing in 2019

For Sarah Henchoz, a partner in Allen and Overy’s employment team who has hailed 2019 ‘the year of culture’ for big employers, her department has seen a spike in advisory work following the emergence of the #MeToo scandal in late 2017: ‘The first week back in January 2018 we received six separate new matters all relating to sexual harassment or misconduct,’ she says. Continue reading “Market Report: Employment – The toughest gig in town”

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Australia pull continues as Dentons, DWF and LOD announce expansion

Sydney, Australia

Described in some quarters as an overlawyered market for a country with a population of 25 million, Australia continues to attract investment from the international legal industry in all its shapes and forms. Global giant Dentons, recently-listed DWF and New Law outfit Lawyers On Demand (LOD) have all expanded their presence in the country.

Just over two years after entering Australia through a merger with national firm Gadens, Dentons has hit the 280-lawyer mark in the country after absorbing Adelaide-based Fisher Jeffries. ‘This completes our footprint across the major cities in Australia,’ regional chair and chief executive Doug Stipanicev told Legal Business. Continue reading “Australia pull continues as Dentons, DWF and LOD announce expansion”

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In-house round-up: New GCs for Royal Mail, Sky and Deliveroo

Claire Canning

Royal Mail has filled the void left following former general counsel (GC) Maaike de Bie’s departure to easyJet, hiring in-house veteran Mark Amsden as its group GC and chief risk and governance officer.

Amsden was group GC and company secretary for Morrisons between 2013 and 2017, before a brief stint last year as interim company secretary at Yorkshire Water. Prior to going in-house, Amsden spent 14 years as a partner at Addleshaw Goddard, after starting out at Manchester firm Slater Heelis. Royal Mail has historically counted Addleshaws among its preferred external counsel. Continue reading “In-house round-up: New GCs for Royal Mail, Sky and Deliveroo”

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Sponsored briefing: Allen & Overy horizon scans to the workplace of the future

Allen & Overy

A Q&A with Sarah Henchoz, head of employment at Allen & Overy

Sarah Henchoz is a partner and head of Allen & Overy’s London employment team. In this interview, she draws on her experience to explain how the massive shift in workplace culture will define the future world of work. Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Allen & Overy horizon scans to the workplace of the future”

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Market Report: Mediation – Coming of age

Kate Jackson

Twenty years on since the Woolf Reforms, Dominic Carman assesses mediation’s slow but steady march to the disputes mainstream

Mediation is big business. That much is evident from the 2018 Mediation Audit published biennially by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR). It confirms that there were 12,000 mediations – up by 20% in two years and double the number in 2010 – involving £11.5bn in aggregate dispute value. Of these, 7,500 were ad hoc referrals while 4,500 originated from organised mediation schemes, such as NHS Resolution and the Court of Appeal scheme. Continue reading “Market Report: Mediation – Coming of age”

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Mind the gap(s) – more of the same old inequality and fudged statistics prevalent in Big Law

Richard Foley

The second season of gender pay gap reporting has again laid bare the stark disparities between men and women throughout the legal sector. However, with only two rounds of reporting to look at so far, the trajectory of pay equality in legal is still difficult to ascertain. Instead, conversations have turned to the value of reporting gender pay in of itself, particularly given the lack of common methodology in gauging the numbers.

These concerns are not new to the latest reporting round. In March 2018 Pinsent Masons senior partner Richard Foley (pictured) criticised the current regime’s lack of consistency in reporting benchmarks. The Law Society later in November 2018 called for uniformity in gender reporting, publishing guidelines on how firms could provide more clarity on the issue. Recommendations included firms distinguishing between equity and non-equity partners, publishing a full-time equivalent (FTE) compensation gap based on the full financial year and reporting on partner bonus schemes. Continue reading “Mind the gap(s) – more of the same old inequality and fudged statistics prevalent in Big Law”

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No alarms and no surprises – Behind the Mindful Business Charter

Any lawyer of a certain vintage can recall the dawn of the BlackBerry age, the watershed moment at the turn of the Millennium that meant you could always be on call. It was a blessing and a curse.

But the initial freedom of being able to work anywhere at any time has become a crippling 24/7 expectation for some, with the inability to ‘switch off’ being an oft-cited issue. Continue reading “No alarms and no surprises – Behind the Mindful Business Charter”

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Sponsored briefing: The world-class disputes space the City’s been waiting for

Int Arb

A message from the chief executive of The International Arbitration Centre

As London’s newest dispute resolution centre, The International Arbitration Centre (IAC) is delighted to sponsor the Disputes Yearbook. It is no exaggeration to say that over the last ten years London has risen to become the new home of international arbitration, offering a selection of firms and chambers, partners, barristers and QCs, and a deep pool of supporting counsel, funders, and experts. Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: The world-class disputes space the City’s been waiting for”

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Corporations with benefits – Assessing the rise of US public benefit companies

When looking for good in the world, corporate governance law is not the most obvious place to train your eye. However, there is a sizeable band of corporations – thousands, in fact – who have opted to start just there, using corporate governance as a springboard to the greater good.

Shareholder primacy, often cast as the villain in corporate scandals or blinkered business decisions, operates on the theory that the job of directors and management is to maximise returns to investors. In turn, corporate law is traditionally viewed as a contract between corporations and investors that the company will, in the balance of law, deliver the highest return. Continue reading “Corporations with benefits – Assessing the rise of US public benefit companies”

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Tom Johnson, Federal Communications Commission

I have always been attracted to public service. A number of my colleagues from my time at Gibson Dunn had gone on to serve as solicitors general in state attorney generals’ offices. Those offices provide unparalleled opportunities, such as the chance to argue appeals and challenge areas in which the federal government has exceeded its powers and placed onerous regulatory requirements on the state. So I was very grateful to have been offered the opportunity to work in the West Virginia solicitor general’s office.

In 2017, I became the general counsel (GC) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). I am primarily responsible for two components – reviewing Commission rules and orders to ensure they are legally sustainable, and defending those actions in court. I also oversee units that deal with fraud and bankruptcy issues, as well as various internal issues like employment matters. In West Virginia, I supervised four or five attorneys at any given time. Now, I oversee a team of more than 70 lawyers, so I’ve had to focus a lot more on learning how best to allocate my time and how best to delegate. Continue reading “Tom Johnson, Federal Communications Commission”

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The Middle East: The rough with the crude

The global economy is slowing and so too is the Middle East. In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)almost halved this year’s growth forecast for the MENA region to 1.3%, from its previous estimate of 2.5% in October 2018. Dragging everything down is the oil sector – particularly in Saudi Arabia – US sanctions in Iran, and geopolitical tensions in other economies such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

But such downgrades are no surprise for lawyers in the region. ‘There is no doubt the region is going through a downturn,’ says Richard Gimblett, resident managing partner of the Dubai arm of Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW), which has more than 50 lawyers across its offices in Riyadh, Dubai, Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi. ‘The volatile price of oil obviously hasn’t helped. These are still largely petro-economies, although they are trying to diversify.’ Continue reading “The Middle East: The rough with the crude”

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Picking up the pieces – the risk debate gauges the #MeToo era

Niamh Counihan

A clear focus on a number of #MeToo episodes among City law firms has led to a close examination of culture by risk teams as well as wider discussion of reputational damage and the extent to which this can be measured.

We gathered leading risk experts from some of the UK and international firms in the eye of the storm to debate what steps can be taken not just to deal with reputational fallout but to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Continue reading “Picking up the pieces – the risk debate gauges the #MeToo era”

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Letter from Iberia – Despite turbulent politics, Madrid lawyers sustain bullish mood

In spring 2018, Legal Business found the Madrid legal elite still recovering from a jolt that unsettled the local establishment. As one of the best-regarded deal makers in Spain, Juan Picón had at the end of 2017 given up his role as DLA Piper senior partner to join Latham & Watkins as Madrid head and Latin America co-chair.

Off the back of three consecutive years of GDP growth above 3% and mounting interest from international investors, Spain had been moving back onto the radar of leading international firms – the list of those stepping up investment in the country going well beyond the US giant to range as wide as Allen & Overy (A&O) to Fieldfisher. Some believed signs of renewed investment would shake up the staid local talent market and bring fresh challenges to the elite independents – Uría Menéndez, Garrigues and Cuatrecasas. Continue reading “Letter from Iberia – Despite turbulent politics, Madrid lawyers sustain bullish mood”

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Can law tech’s big beasts Lexis and Thomson stay on top in a changing industry?

Digital whales

So ubiquitous have two companies become in legal tech circles that they are rarely discussed directly, just accepted as facts of life, like gravity or air. Those two are, of course, LexisNexis and the legal division of Thomson Reuters, which have over the last 30 years positioned themselves as the dominant providers of the informational ‘plumbing’ law firms require to ply their trade.

For LexisNexis that key moment came in the 1970s when an arm of the Ohio State Bar Association commissioned a project to deliver an information service exclusively aimed at legal research, named Lexis. During the same decade West Publishing was Lexis’ main competitor, using a computer-assisted legal research project that would later be branded Westlaw. Continue reading “Can law tech’s big beasts Lexis and Thomson stay on top in a changing industry?”

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Law Tech Special: Fake rugs and drill bits – Incopro eyes brand protection dominance

Simon Baggs

Seven years after Wiggin set up IP technology company Incopro, it has raised $21m and expanded to protect more than 600 brands, Hamish McNicol reports

Simon Baggs, co-founder and chief executive of online brand protection provider Incopro, has a friend who designs and sells high-end rugs for tens of thousands of pounds. Within days of a visit to a trade fair in China, however, there were fake replicas of her product available on e-commerce giant Alibaba.com. Continue reading “Law Tech Special: Fake rugs and drill bits – Incopro eyes brand protection dominance”