Travers Smith has nominated former tax department head Kathleen Russ (pictured) as its new senior partner, to succeed long-serving Chris Hale whose term comes to an end 1 July 2019.
Russ is a relative veteran in her own right, acting as a partner in the firm’s tax practice since 2001, and heading the team between July 2007 and January 2017. Continue reading “Travers’ former tax head Kathleen Russ elected as senior partner successor to Chris Hale”
The first signs of a late-autumn slowdown in City laterals emerged last week with Eversheds Sutherland making the only significant hire in London, strengthening its corporate practice. Meanwhile, DLA Piper bolstered its litigation offering in Madrid in a slightly busier international round and Ashurst landed a partner at the expense of White & Case in Abu Dhabi.
Eversheds added to its corporate bench with the hire of Stewart Womersley from Addleshaw Goddard’s funds and indirect real estate team. Womersley had been a partner at Addleshaw Goddard for over four years, and focused on corporate real estate transactions and joint ventures. Womersley will now join a cross-department team at Eversheds that covers real estate, tax, funds and banking. Continue reading “Revolving Doors: Eversheds makes City corporate play as DLA and Ashurst announce international hires”
White & Case’s City hiring spree continues to go great guns with the recruitment of Weil Gotshal & Manges’ well-regarded head of banking, Mark Donald.
Donald has been at Weil for six years, taking on the head of banking role vacated by Stephen Lucas when he left for Kirkland & Ellis in 2014. Before Weil, Donald had spent 15 years at Hogan Lovells. Continue reading “‘Real fire power’: Weil loses banking head to White & Case’s unrelenting hiring spree”
The likelihood of Clifford Chance’s (CC) next senior partner being based outside London has surged after the first round of voting.
UK-based insurance head Katherine Coates and former capital markets chief David Dunnigan have dropped out of the race to become Malcom Sweeting’s successor at CC, after none of the five candidates secured more than 50% of votes in the first round. Continue reading “Two European candidates remain as CC’s senior partner contest goes down to three”
A number of contacts have been telling me of late that Legal Business is gaining a reputation for being ultra-bearish on the Magic Circle. So entrenched is this view becoming that one Freshfields partner has apparently taken to claiming to colleagues that LB is talking down the Magic Circle in favour of US players because recruiters tell us to.
For the record, we have a church-and-state divide here and if any commercial partner wants to try to dictate our editorial line, I’d say: ‘Give it a try… and see what happens.’ But, more to the point, such comments misconstrue the basis on which we critique top City firms. London leaders have been a huge success story for corporate Britain – one that has failed to get the credit it was due in business circles. And, as a born Londoner, in as much as I get attached to law firms, there is an instinctive leaning towards wanting the local boys to do good. In short, we are not pointing out City leaders have faltered to revel in that failure. It is to make constructive arguments about what must be addressed if they are to renew themselves. We come not to bury the Magic Circle but to save it. Continue reading “Comment: We come not to bury the Magic Circle but to save it”
In a busy week for the legal watchdog, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has announced it is postponing the implementation of its new centralised assessment, dubbed the ‘super-exam’, until September 2021.
The new Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) was originally slated for a 2020 launch, but the SRA has postponed plans after law firms and education providers indicated a ‘strong preference’ for a delay. Continue reading “SRA defers super exam until 2021 as costs of new assessment revealed”
In a significant easing of practice rules, the Legal Services Board (LSB) has approved divisive plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to allow solicitors from unregulated businesses to offer unreserved legal services.
Crucially, permitting solicitors outside of the SRA control to offer services means consumers could have no guarantees on insurance pay outs or compensation. Continue reading “‘A giant opening for competitive forces’ – Controversial SRA handbook overhaul given green light as Passmore steps down”
The Law Society has called for uniformity in law firms’ gender pay gap reporting in a bid to ‘get ahead of the curve’ of what has proven a sluggish pace in tackling gender pay disparities.
The Law Society’s recommendations for a common set of standards were published as part of a guidance document today (6 November), with the standout focus being on how partner remuneration is included in gender pay gap reporting. Continue reading “Law Society pushes firms for increased transparency on partner pay gaps”
Consider this a call to arms or an acknowledgement that I can use all the help I can get but our team has begun turning its mind to the next Enterprise GC summit, the flagship in-house event from our parent company Legalease. It is, and has been, a group effort spanning teams across The Legal 500 and GC magazine, but this year a little more of the initial work on the conference agenda is falling to the Legal Business editorial team than in the previous three years of the event and we do not want to let the side down.
My hope is that we build on a successful event because there is no point bothering with a two-day residential GC get-together if you do not put your shoulder to the wheel, given the number of such events these days. Continue reading “Enterprise GC 2019 – Our flagship in-house event returns bigger, better and with a lot more bluechip GCs”
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has condemned a Government plan to mutually recognise international legal qualifications as part of post-Brexit trade deals.
The Department for International Trade had opened consultations on its tactics for free trade agreements (FTAs) with Australia, New Zealand, the USA and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Continue reading “SRA shoots down Government plans for post-Brexit mutual recognition of legal qualifications”
There were a number of lateral hires in the London last week, with Stephenson Harwood, Ropes & Gray and Osborne Clarke all strengthening their City benches. Meanwhile internationally HFW bucked the recent trend of downsizing in the Middle East with a senior hire from Bird & Bird.
Stephenson Harwood’s hire came in its energy group as the firm secured partner Marc Hammerson from Akin Gump. Hammerson returns to Stephenson Harwood having been a partner at the firm between 2006 and 2011, bringing back his experience in advising on upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas and infrastructure projects. Continue reading “Revolving Doors: Stephenson Harwood and Ropes make moves in a busy City recruitment round as HFW expands in Abu Dhabi”
I used to believe the UK legal profession was more imaginative than it got credit for – now I find with an increasingly jaded eye what fresh thinking there is has become stretched ludicrously thin. The vast majority of technology and new models are deployed to make the existing law firm a little more efficient to defensively preserve partner profits.
On one level, you can salute the hard-headed focus on margin. On the another, there are increasingly ominous questions about what worship of margin above other considerations will do to the legal industry at a time of structural pressure. You do not have to be devotees of Peter Drucker or Clayton Christensen to believe that aspiring to run law firms on 50%-plus margins creates a huge amount of competitive space for new entrants to operate and forge potent beachheads. It seems highly debatable that the legal industry will over the next 10 to 20 years sustain large swathes of providers operating on such fat returns. Continue reading “Comment: The great distraction – The innovation bandwagon has hobbled law’s market forces”
Linklaters has bolstered its technology clout with the hire of Ashurst’s well-regarded head of global IT, Bruna Pellicci.
Pellicci becomes the Magic Circle firm’s chief technology officer (CTO) after more than 11 years at Ashurst, five of which were as the firm’s global IT director. Continue reading “Linklaters finishes tech jigsaw with hire of Ashurst’s global IT head”
In another stark example of the disparity in the treatment of men and women within City law, Macfarlanes has revealed an average gender pay gap of 55% at partner level.
On a median income basis, the gap between the firm’s male and female partners is even higher: a stark 73%. A key factor making this gulf so pronounced is the feeble female representation in its partnership ranks: in the 2017/18 financial year just 12 of Macfarlanes’ 85 partners were female. Continue reading “Macfarlanes holds hands up to significant gender pay gap at partner level”
Once, not long ago, considerations of ethics were simple for law firms, if they bothered thinking about them at all. If what they were advising on was legal, however morally questionable, it was all good. Professional ethics? You didn’t need to worry – they were lawyers.
Those halcyon days are passing. Consider the convulsions in the profession regarding non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and their rampant use covering up harassment, a debate that has simmered for a year now. This topic skewers the profession on two fronts – NDAs have not only been used by law firms as a means of concealing poor behaviour by partners towards staff but they drew up the gagging agreements used by business at large. Continue reading “Comment: NDA mess shows age of just-about-OK legal ethics has passed”
I was probably the world’s worst children’s entertainer. I needed a Saturday job to earn money but played football on Sunday mornings and rugby on Saturday mornings. A friend had a business that did magic tricks for children’s parties and I could fit the job around the sport. No, I didn’t dress up as a clown. I might have been a bit of a clown, but I didn’t dress up as one! I was the person at whom the children shouted: ‘I know how you’re doing that trick!’
They gave you a Fisher Price magic set. My stage name was Roger because they already had a Michael. I’m amazed you managed to find out about this – I thought it was quite a well-kept secret! Continue reading “Life during law: Mike Francies”
Legal spend is the second-largest ‘cost centre’ for £21bn global banking giant Barclays. This tantalising statement is in the bank’s 2018 Request for Quotation document, sent to law firms ahead of its final panel review this year and seen by Legal Business. The document provides detail on what Barclays describes as this ‘sizeable’ legal spend.
In the 18 months to January this year, for instance, around 35% of its legal budget was spent internally in running an in-house legal department that dwarfs many major law firms at more than 750 staff. The rest was spent externally, about half in the Americas and just over a third in the UK. Continue reading “Point break – The extreme measures of Barclays’ adviser review”
When Brent Irvin joined Tencent as group general counsel (GC) nearly nine years ago, the Chinese upstart was already a tech wunderkind, boasting revenue close to RMB20bn. But few foresaw the trajectory it would take from there: with dramatic growth in 2017, the company is now valued at more than $477bn.
‘We have always been about combining social and content, but in the beginning we were more games-focused,’ notes Irvin. Continue reading “Asia GC perspective – Tencent on the dollar”
‘The thing about China is there have always been those who think the bubble is going to burst and the die-hard optimists on the other side,’ says Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW) Shanghai head Nick Poynder. Indeed, though the second group (to which Poynder belongs) has lately been the noisiest. Not that optimists lack evidence for their confidence. With over 100 Chinese companies in the Fortune Global 500 hungry for overseas expansion, the assets of Asian banks surging since the banking crisis and an economy still growing more than twice as fast as the US, the market is impossible to ignore. Says Osborne Clarke (OC)’s Steve Yu: ‘[International firms] have to be there because their clients are there.’
With alternative legal services arms at Global 100 law firms in full swing, and innovation and technology experts striving to make those firms relevant and responsive to the demands of increasingly value-conscious clients, it is fair to say the future is now.
But the traditional role of the lawyer is perhaps facing its biggest existential crisis now as those new demands challenge what legal practice means today. Will the lawyer of 2030 render the celebrated black-letter technicians and swashbuckling dealmakers obsolete? Continue reading “The technology debate: Ctrl+Alt+Delete”
