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Reform underway as Dentons shakes up profit-sharing arrangement in China

Following its landmark combination with Dentons to create a 7,500-lawyer legal giant, legacy Dacheng is restructuring its practice to reduce the number of profit pools from 15 to five.

With Dentons striving to integrate what is now the world’s largest law firm by employee headcount, the China arm of the firm, headed by senior partner Jinquan Xiao, has carried out a reorganisation to create increased profit-sharing between the firm’s 44 Chinese offices.

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Outgoing Slaughter and May senior partner Saul to launch mediation boutique

Slaughter and May’s longstanding leader, Chris Saul, will launch a mediation boutique once he retires from his role as senior partner on 30 April.

Saul, who is retiring from the UK’s most profitable law firm after eight years at the helm, is planning to launch a mediation firm later this year. In what is an unusual move for a corporate lawyer, Saul will set up a mediation consultancy called Christopher Saul Associates this autumn to provide dispute resolution advice to corporates. Saul registered the new firm with Companies House at the start of March.

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Value range – as the money pours in, can Israel takes its high-growth stars global?

Tel Aviv tech style

Israel’s regional tensions contrast with optimistic hopes for foreign investment and a burgeoning economy. While war still rages over the border in nearby Syria, Israel’s start-up and hi-tech sector is flourishing. In addition, its nascent natural gas industry finally looks primed for substantial development.

Life is good in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv, says Barry Levenfeld, a partner at Yigal Arnon & Co: ‘Economically and politically, Israel remains stable, while our neighbours are more dangerous by the minute. Sitting here on the 47th floor in Tel Aviv, looking across the Mediterranean and with all the restaurants and coffee houses below, you just wouldn’t know that any of this was going on.’ Continue reading “Value range – as the money pours in, can Israel takes its high-growth stars global?”

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Picón prepares to push DLA Piper upmarket as Sir Nigel Knowles makes that last goodbye

Tom Moore looks to the future of DLA as he meets the firm’s latest leader

Juan Picón’s face now adorns the WhatsApp group ‘Executive Rules’, used by DLA Piper’s leadership to share videos of karaoke nights, office yoga sessions and champagne moments, while running the world’s second largest law firm by revenue.

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Life During Law: Chris Saul, Slaughter and May

Every time my father got a promotion we had to move. It trains you to fit in with new crowds. He worked for the Midland Bank. We lived in Carlisle, Shropshire, Birmingham, Kingston-upon-Thames and Manchester. It focused me on academic work as each new school had a different syllabus so I was always catching up.

I used to stand in our garage handing my father spanners. My favourite car in my youth was the Lancia Aurelia B20 GT, which was one of the classic Pininfarina designs of the ’50s. They were the embodiment of high-quality engineering. I went through a severe Lancia-buying phase in my 20s. I bought five!

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Leadership, strategy and culture: behind the failed merger discussions between BLP and Greenberg

Following the fallout of failed merger talks between Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Greenberg Traurig, it has emerged the UK firm’s leadership was an issue for the Miami giant.

The merger had promised to create a property and disputes giant across the Atlantic and one of the most distinctive law firms in the global market but was called off in March.

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Fit for purpose? Critics round on SFO as forex charges are dropped

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been criticised for shutting down its investigation into alleged rigging in the foreign exchange (forex) market after it could not find sufficient evidence to prosecute.

Despite some of the world’s largest banks being fined billions for forex rate manipulation, the UK’s fraud watchdog dropped the probe in March without bringing any charges.

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None so zealous – how and why GCs fell in love with mentoring

In-house counsel are increasingly united on the benefits of mentoring programmes. Is there substance behind the corporate fad?

‘I believe very strongly in leading by example,’ says Nokia global head of litigation Richard Vary. Although his legal team has a formal mentoring system in place, he believes it is the informal connections built in mentoring that play the most important role in developing in-house counsel. ‘You bring the people along, they see what you do, they see how you work rather than [you] telling people how to do their jobs. They’re professionals, they know what they’re doing. They’re intelligent – you give them the space to figure it out for themselves but also give them an example of the model of behaviours that you want.’

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KWM to cut 15% of legacy SJ Berwin partnership following major shake-up

Following a major overhaul of its practice structure, King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) said in March it would axe 15% of its Europe and Middle East partnership, and make 45 business services employees redundant in London.

The move means 24 partners will leave the firm and is the second shake-up of the legacy SJ Berwin partnership in 12 months, when another 10% of the partnership across the region were asked to leave following a performance review.

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The finance view: Scaling up – GCs and finance partners get ready for the grind of ring-fencing reforms

Victoria Young assesses the approach to implementation of ring-fencing rules

Though the deadline for full implementation is over two years off, the looming threat of so-called ring-fencing reforms is already having a major impact on UK banking groups and their legal teams.

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The risk debate: The gate keepers’ burden

Our annual Legal Business/Marsh round table saw law firm risk managers debate their role in fighting on two fronts – against demanding clients and internally with their fee-earners

Our 2016 risk management report, published last month, looked at a number of live issues for risk management teams within the UK leading firms, most of which place those teams at the frontline of potential battles.

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Magic Circle trio land £2bn London City Airport sale

Three Magic Circle firms have closed the £2bn sale of London City Airport to a Canadian-led consortium of investors.

Linklaters, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Slaughter and May acted on the sale of the airport, located six miles from London’s financial district, which was completed late March after the Canadian consortium competed with two Chinese bidders.

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Eversheds and Gowling WLG target Singapore with high hopes for booming ASEAN economic region

International firms target local mergers in regional hub

Asia’s burgeoning economic growth coupled with new initiatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) community has seen further interest in Singapore’s legal market spike as Global 100 firms explore new ventures in the city-state.

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Garrigues ramps up global push with London arbitration play and Chile tie-up

Garrigues continued its global expansion by hiring its first English-qualified partner in the City with the arrival of Winston & Strawn’s co-head of international arbitration, Joe Tirado, to start an arbitration practice. The launch comes in the same month the firm added Chile to its Latin American network.

Tirado will become co-head of international arbitration as the firm seeks to provide a London hub for disputes in Latin America, where alternative dispute resolution has become commonplace following a series of investor-state disputes stemming from the nationalisation of energy assets across the continent in the 1990s. Tirado becomes the second lawyer in Garrigues’ London office, alongside corporate lawyer Ignacio Corbera Dale.

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‘This is a gritty place’: Macfarlanes’ leaders on the hustle it takes to look effortless

Victoria Young talks to the singular City player about success and bucking the market

‘Strong culture’, ‘high quality’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ are phrases repeatedly associated with Macfarlanes among peers and former staff. And its recently re-elected executive has no desire to debunk the image of a hard-nosed, competitive shop.

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Global London overview: The eagle has landed

Legal Business’ 14th annual Global London survey assesses the breakthrough of the City’s leading US shops in the past 12 months

Recently appointed to jointly lead his firm’s expansive City office, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher tax partner Jeffrey Trinklein recalls a visit to London in the early nineties. ‘Back then, the US offices in London were 100% American lawyers. Now it’s 10%.’

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Client profile: Richard Vary, Nokia

The comms and IT multinational’s litigation head on the takeover of Alcatel-Lucent and its tax battle with India

When asked what keeps him in-house, Nokia’s Richard Vary is quick to tout travel and the adrenaline as two top selling points of the job. His role as head of litigation has placed him in some interesting scenarios over his ten years working for the multinational communications and IT company. ‘It was my birthday last year when I arrived at work and then discovered we had a hearing in India the next day,’ Vary told Legal Business. ‘So my 43rd birthday consisted of buying a shirt and a pair of pants, and jumping on the next British Airways flight to Delhi, sitting there in 40° heat in this packed, humid courtroom in a woollen suit, trying to follow the details in a tax case in the most run-down, awful building. There were chickens and goats outside the door of this courtroom, and some guy asleep on the floor in the back row, just fast asleep, lying on the concrete floor in the middle of a trial. It was very odd.’

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