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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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Are you selling judgement or process? Few modern law firms can excel at both

Charlie Geffen argues the legal market is segmenting between two diverging arenas

A few years ago the general counsel of one of the big banks told me that they only went to outside law firms for three reasons.

First to get advice on what to do. That could be on a deal, a dispute or some other objective of the bank. It requires senior time and is not particularly price sensitive. Let’s call that ‘advisory work’.

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Keeping up with Ross and Kim – the work to do on shaping the legal stars of tomorrow

CC’s David Bickerton says the profession is yet to master training the lawyers of the future

New entrants to the legal profession will be competing head on against Kim, the virtual assistant from Riverview Law, and Ross, IBM Watson’s ‘super-intelligent’ attorney, in delivering services to clients. Ross, unlike most of us, has the ability to research every resource of legal knowledge in seconds, and, even more impressive to the older ones among us, remember it.

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Kiss the ring – patronage, in-fighting and exits threaten to stall Kirkland’s bandwagon

Jaishree Kalia sizes up the clashing egos and driving ambition at Kirkland’s City arm.

Flashy cars, Dom Pérignon and top dollar are just some of the things associated with Kirkland & Ellis’ City high-flyers. The top ten global law firm has been highly successful in London since setting up shop in 1994 to service trophy client Bain Capital. The practice is certainly substantial, generating over $180m in 2015, according to one partner.

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The last word – Swoop to conquer

With the publication of our annual Global London report, leading figures at US law firms in the City weigh up a volatile market


COMPELLING ALTERNATIVES

‘Global corporates, wherever they are headquartered, are increasingly recognising that we provide the same depth and quality as the Magic Circle in London but also with a global platform that extends into the US. Outside of the US, it is comparable with the Magic Circle. When you put that proposal to a global corporate, then we can provide a compelling alternative as we can speak in English and American accents.’

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Global London: The Barbarians storming the gate of City deal work

Mainstream M&A has for decades been the stronghold of the City elite… and the ground US law firms struggled to seize. As some of Wall Street’s elite ramp up City investment, is plc deal work about to fall to US invaders?

With seven days left on the clock to force through a bid for the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, many in the City were surprised when Pfizer put forward a final £69bn offer on a spring Sunday evening when most shareholders were out enjoying their weekends.

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Global London: European firms move into the unknown

Last year European partners voiced their fears over the possibility of the UK leaving the EU. Now they could be preparing for grim reality.

The issue on every European partner’s lips in London is the outcome and fallout of the UK’s Brexit referendum on 23 June. In last year’s Global London report, there was a palpable hope that Britain wouldn’t vote to leave the EU. Now European firms have to prepare themselves for that possibility.

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The journey continues – GCs keep marching onwards

For the 2016 edition of GC Powerlist we return to the original format of the report – launched in 2013 – focusing on senior general counsel (GCs). Over that time, the report has expanded hugely to become one of the most important strands of Legalease’s portfolio. Expanding the report also reflects the reality that in understanding GCs, you need to look at the specifics. While law firms operate on a few variants of the same model, in-house teams are defined much more by the industry and the individual company in which they work.

But there are broad trends as well. The upward march of the in-house profession that this report was originally launched to chronicle has, if anything, accelerated. While law firms are struggling for growth in many sectors, in-house teams continue to expand in the UK and take on greater swathes of work. It’s becoming increasingly mainstream to encounter teams with multimillion-pound budgets that put only a tiny minority of their work to law firms. Where they are instructing outside counsel, a good proportion of GCs now barely bother to conceal their tactic of pushing law firms down the value chain… and their teams correspondingly upwards.

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The GC Powerlist 2016 overview: Independent by design

The 2016 edition of GC Powerlist showcases over 100 senior GCs defining the most confident branch of the profession. The age of uncertainty has never offered more rewards – or challenges – for legal heads

‘In our game, regime change is a big threat. You end up seeing quite a few CEOs come and go and a lot of new managers want to change the deck. The GC, however, can be a reliable presence. I’ve seen a lot of people come and go so I know where the bodies are buried!’
Geoffrey Timms, Legal & General

Are we nearing the post-general counsel (GC) age? In the fourth and largest edition of GC Powerlist, the responsibility, pressure and influence accorded to GCs has only grown: primarily thanks to the multi-pronged regulatory onslaught that is reshaping the business environment.

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