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The Brexit debate: The big uneasy

The biggest issue facing business for a generation looms on 23 June with the Brexit vote. We assembled a group of GCs to find out how they are managing the unmanageable.

It is the business issue that has dominated headlines for months and represents for UK plc a potentially far more profound impact than any general election or change of government. The vote on 23 June on the UK’s membership of the EU promises ominous levels of uncertainty for business and unprecedented challenges for general counsel (GCs) trying to help their companies manage systemic risks. In the second part of a collaboration withHerbert Smith Freehills (HSF), we gathered a group of senior in-house counsel to assess what legal teams should be doing now… and potentially on 24 June.

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The Legal Business 100 debate: No quarter asked

As a resurgent mid-tier asserts itself in the UK legal market, our LB100 debate brings together City players to talk tactics, threats and sharpening your focus.

If the talking point of the UK legal market in recent years has been the sparkling performance of the City mid-tier, success is not leading to complacency. Bringing together a group of leading law firms to pick up themes from our recent annual Legal Business 100 report, it was clear that discipline, focus and a pronounced streak of insecurity means that the group are determined not to surrender the hard-won success they have achieved in the last five years.

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Euro elite: focus Germany – Weltmeister

German independents maintain elite status in a fiercely competitive market, despite the attention of some formidable global players.

‘Our market is one of the most competitive in the world,’ asserts Tobias Bürgers, co-managing partner of Noerr, Germany’s largest independent law firm with 427 fee-earners. In 2015, Noerr increased turnover by 5% to €207.7m.

‘Over the last eight years, we’ve had 70% revenue growth. We’ve outperformed the market proportionately, relative to other firms,’ he adds.

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Euro elite: focus Italy – La dolce vita?

A new generation is revitalising the performance of a trio of Italian leaders committed to remaining steadfastly independent

It’s been a hard decade for Italy, not least for its law firms: the product of a flat economy and relatively few deals. Even before the crisis, the economy had the lowest sustained growth of any OECD country. But there has been a recent renaissance, of sorts, with GDP optimistically predicted to rise by 1.6% in 2016, while concluded deals totalled €50bn in each of the last two years, according to KPMG.

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Euro elite: focus France – Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Strong competition from UK and US firms in Paris and a penchant for tight, focused practices means French firms do not feature large among the Euro Elite.

With its lack of large full-service domestic law firms, the French legal market is unique when compared with other European jurisdictions. A traditional culture of non-partnership and a low threshold when it comes to international investment has created a legal landscape where the few larger French firms face fierce competition from smaller French boutiques, as well as the significant US and UK presence that dominates the Paris market.

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Euro elite: focus Iberia – Pushing boundaries

Dominant in their home markets, law firms from Spain and Portugal have weathered the tempest by heading for far-flung locations.

As the EU’s fifth-largest economy, Spain is home to two of Europe’s legal giants, Garrigues and Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira: between them they have more lawyers worldwide than Linklaters – 1,410 and 970 respectively. In dwarfing the local competition, their reach is also significant. Madrid-based Garrigues has 34 offices in 13 countries and its Barcelona opponent, Cuatrecasas, 25 offices in 11 countries.

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Euro elite: focus Central and Eastern Europe – The tiger by the tail

Price wars, political and economic tensions and prolonged attention from large Anglo-Saxon players in the region have made the going challenging for independent firms in CEE.

With a few notable exceptions, the last five years have seen some international law firms retreat from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – in part a belated reaction to the financial crisis – while others have downsized due to profitability problems. But for independent law firms, good opportunities remain in the region as local markets recover. On aggregate, the CEE economies grew by 3.6% last year and are projected to increase by 3.1% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

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Euro elite: focus Switzerland – Like clockwork

All the cultural stereotypes are ingrained in Swiss law firms – well-organised, independent and highly-impressive.

Six Swiss firms make the Euro Elite – impressive for a country of just 8.4 million people. But then the Swiss have a longstanding reputation for being well organised, well educated and well resourced, while the economy – lightly regulated and low taxed – consistently ranks as the world’s most competitive, enjoying the highest per-capita income of any major country, except Norway.

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Euro elite: focus Ireland – Back with a bang

Independent firms dominate the Irish legal market but a slowdown in inversion-style deals threatens a robust post-crisis recovery.

‘The Irish economy is very small, open and independent, which is to a large extent very dependent on international capital,’ says Brian O’Gorman, managing partner of Arthur Cox. ‘One of the things that helped Ireland recover from the financial crisis and beyond was the willingness of international private equity and in particular major US private equity to invest in Ireland.’

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Euro elite: focus Baltics – All change

Consolidation among the biggest players in the Baltic states has led to the creation of an elite tier of independent firms.

2015 was a significant year for the Baltic legal market, with rapid consolidation between firms in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania creating, as Sorainen’s co-managing partner Laimonas Skibarka describes it, a ‘Baltic Magic Circle’.

Rival firms Raidla Lejins & Norcous and Lawin confirmed they had traded their Estonian offices to form two new firms – Cobalt and Ellex. In late 2015, Cobalt acquired the Baltic offices of Finnish firm Borenius, taking its numbers to 31 partners and 176 lawyers. Ellex (technically three firms under one common brand) sits at 30 partners with 167 lawyers, keeping it in close competition with its rival.

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Euro elite: focus Greece, Turkey and The Balkans – Bouncing back

They may not be out of the woods yet, but independent firms from the south-east tip of Europe are showing their resilience.

In a region of Europe marred by economic crisis and political unrest, many firms in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and the Balkan Peninsula have remained resilient. The expectation that testing circumstances could lead to bad news for many firms has been offset by international interest or domestic legal work that came with the uncertainty.

John Dryllerakis, managing senior partner of Greece’s Dryllerakis & Associates – a firm that despite having just 44 lawyers scores highly in The Legal 500 EMEA – has the most ominous outlook. Capital controls, a possible exit from the Eurozone and two general elections have caused significant uncertainty in the country.

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Euro elite: focus Nordics – Power, soft and hard

The Euro Elite is dominated by independents from the Nordics – large, high-quality and able to resist the advance of international firms.

The Nordic countries – Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland – are diverse legal markets that are home to a strong array of independent domestic firms, including Mannheimer Swartling and Vinge in Sweden, and Denmark’s ‘big four’: Kromann Reumert, Plesner, Gorrissen Federspiel and Bech-Bruun.

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Euro elite: focus Benelux – Perfect triptych

While local firms in the three Benelux countries have had to fight global law firms at one time or another, the independents have successfully held their own.

The Benelux countries – Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – may be closely-knit neighbouring states in central Europe, but their legal markets are distinctly different. And while historically these countries joined West Germany, France and Italy to form the European Coal and Steel Community – a predecessor to the EU – the rules and regulations for each market have created unique landscapes for law firms.

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Euro elite: focus Russia and CIS – Cold fronts

While international firms have enjoyed tussling with leading independents in Moscow for years, a hardening market has seen the local players show their resilience.

Russia’s legal market continues to struggle after international sanctions were imposed in 2014 during the Ukraine crisis, affecting corporate, commercial and capital markets. These penalties added to the problems the region was already grappling with following the global financial crisis and low oil prices that were hitting the nation’s industry.

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Banking on change: bonuses still centre stage

Tapestry’s Janet Cooper on regulatory developments affecting pay in financial services.

Since 2009, regulators around the world have been issuing regulations and guidance on how and what employees in financial services firms should be paid. For lawyers working in the area, staying on top of the changes is challenging; making sense of them and applying them in a global context is complex.

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The importance of getting early advice

Kate McMahon of Edmonds, Marshall, McMahon on EMM’s unique offering to victims.

Edmonds, Marshall, McMahon (EMM) was set up in 2012 as a boutique firm specialising solely in private prosecutions, the first and only specialist private prosecution firm in the country. The three founding partners are all experienced prosecutors, with Tamlyn Edmonds previously heading up the prosecution team for the Department of Health, Kate McMahon prosecuting for the bribery and corruption team at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), and Andrew Marshall being a Grade 4 Advocate for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Standing Counsel for the Attorney General’s list of prosecuting counsel.

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