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The case against value – the virtue that can become vice

It’s the spirit of the age that law firms feel the need to not only deliver better value and efficiency but to be seen to do so by clients.

And what could be wrong with that? The northshoring trend has been increasingly apparent in recent years, with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – the closest to a traditional partnership in the big four – now gearing up for a huge move to Manchester. Clifford Chance, meanwhile, has made much of its efficiency and push to align itself to clients, a stance clear under the leadership of David Childs and even more front-and-centre under Matthew Layton.

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Freshfields’ northshoring planned on radical scale as City leader repositions for changing law market

Internal worries as firm’s new low-cost hub could affect up to 800 roles

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s decision to jump on the near-shoring wagon with its first low-cost services hub in Manchester is on a scale larger than its peers, with up to 800 support service jobs being transferred – a move which is unsettling some at its Fleet Street headquarters.

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Severn Trent sticks by Eversheds as sole adviser until 2020

FTSE 100 water company Severn Trent has reappointed Eversheds as its sole adviser for a new five-year term, despite having strongly considered appointing at least two firms to its new roster.

The company’s review took proposals from a total of 13 firms across five different areas: debt recovery, employment, general quality regulation, property and combined competition/commercial economic regulation. The legal team at Severn Trent had originally planned to give the debt recovery mandate to a smaller, local firm because it didn’t have the volume of work to hand to a larger sole adviser. However several firms, including Eversheds, pitched for a single mandate.

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Linklaters suffers blow as US firms hire trio of leading partners

Linklaters lost a trio of heavyweight partners in February with Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and Kirkland & Ellis cherry-picking from the Magic Circle firm.

Milbank built out its projects practice with the hire of two leading projects partners from Linklaters’ London office, Matthew Hagopian and Manzer Ijaz, who count among their clients Glencore, BP and Eni.

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Barclays Investment Bank hires new global GC

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s co-chair of its financial institutions Mark Shelton is leaving the US firm to join Barclays Investment Bank as its global general counsel (GC) and the regional GC for the Americas.

He leaves private practice after one year to return to the world of in-house in which he has over ten years’ experience. He joined Gibson Dunn in February 2014 from UBS where he was GC and global head of investigation and Americas GC in New York for almost 11 years.

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Mishcon gains ABS licence to include non-lawyers in partnership

Mishcon de Reya has become the latest firm to acquire an alternative business structure (ABS) licence from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), a move that was prompted by bringing up to four key employees into the partnership.

Having applied for the licence last July, the firm was granted approval on 12 February and will become an ABS structure on 10 April.

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Branching out: RPC, Eversheds and Bird & Bird create new consultancy offerings

The recent push by major UK firms into non-legal services looks set to continue, with Bird & Bird and RPC both unveiling moves into non-legal consultancy, while Eversheds further expands its pioneering service.

Sticking with its technology, media and telecoms specialism, Bird & Bird in February established an IT project consultancy, Baseline, in a joint venture with Lancashire-based ASE Consulting. The endeavour sees partners, led by co-head of Bird & Bird’s transformational project team Dominic Cook, invest their own capital in the project, with the team agreeing to pass legal work back to the firm.

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Growing confidence and smaller intakes boost Magic Circle’s trainee retention rates

February saw a flurry of trainee retention rates announced, with the Magic Circle and top-tier firms posting higher rates than in 2014, though taken from smaller pools of young lawyers.

Allen & Overy (A&O) kept on the highest proportion of trainees among Magic Circle firms, with 93% (or 43 out of 46) newly-qualified lawyers being kept on – an increase from the 84% posted last year. Peer firms Clifford Chance and Linklaters were close behind, both unveiling retention rates of 91%, with 41 and 49 trainees staying on respectively. Figures were slightly lower at Slaughter and May, which kept on 37 newly-qualified lawyers (NQs) out of 42, or a rate of 88%, while Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer had the lowest rate of 85%, with 41 staying on from a cohort of 48.

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A new generation and challenges ahead as BLP leader takes helm

Tom Moore on the challenges faced by BLP’s new leader

While Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) staged something of a recovery in 2013/14, longstanding managing partner Neville Eisenberg – who had attracted some internal criticism following a punishing 2012/13 trading period – announced just before Christmas that he would not seek another term. Will Lisa Mayhew, who in February was elected to succeed Eisenberg on 1 May after an intense election campaign, be able to refocus a firm that has faced some internal discord and a listing international strategy?

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Client profile: Alistair Asher, The Co-operative Group

The group’s general counsel on bringing the member-run organisation back from the brink

After spending 34 years at Allen & Overy (A&O), it took veteran corporate partner Alistair Asher just 48 hours to clear his desk and inform clients that he was taking on the general counsel (GC) role at crisis-hit The Co-operative Group (the Co-op) in June 2013.

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Global elite firms have insurance sector consolidation covered

Early 2015 has seen key deals take place as the insurance sector consolidates, with Canada’s property and casualty insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings being the latest to gain a significant presence in London with its takeover of speciality insurer Brit for £1.2bn.

Within a year of being listed on the London Stock Exchange, FTSE 250 insurer Brit turned to a Slaughter and May team, including corporate heavyweight Jeff Twentyman and Richard Smith, while Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison’s London-based capital markets and securities practice head Mark Bergman represented Brit on US law.

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Spain prepares for IPO surge as US firms win key mandates on Aena’s €4.3bn float

The Spanish capital markets showed signs of improving last month as US firms Mayer Brown and Davis Polk & Wardwell won roles advising the world’s largest airport operator Aena on its €4.3bn float on the Madrid stock exchange.

The Spanish government’s disposal of its 49% stake in Aena, which operates some 47 airports worldwide, including Luton, gave the group a total equity value of up to €8.7bn. In what is the largest flotation on the Madrid stock market since the onset of the financial crisis, the value underscores the burgeoning confidence among investors about Spain’s rejuvenated capital markets and economy, and heralds a surge of new mandates for corporate and finance lawyers working in the country.

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The Last Word – The Team Elite

To coincide with the annual launch of our GC Power List, we asked the City’s most experienced private practitioners: what makes an outstanding in-house legal team?

Eyes and ears

‘A good in-house team has the ear of the commercial client, an understanding of its drivers and the strength to speak out when it is going down the wrong path. Teams should ensure they understand the varied approaches to dispute resolution, adopt appropriate methods in different transactional documentation, and consider mediation as a clean and proactive process for disputes at any stage.’
Katie Bradford, head of property litigation, Linklaters

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No playbook for Dentons’ bold China tie-up

Tony Lin sizes up the world’s most lawyered firm and asks what Dentons’ much-hyped tie-up with Dacheng can deliver

Size clearly matters to Joseph Andrew and Elliott Portnoy, the respective chairman and chief executive of Dentons, the international law firm that in January announced a surprise ‘combination’ with Dacheng Law Offices. After all, the tie-up with China’s largest law firm by headcount creates the world’s most lawyered firm.

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Withers leads way in major tie-up as Singapore rush continues

HSF, KWM and DLA Piper invest in key South-East Asia hub

Highlighting continued law firm interest in the Singaporean economy and its potential as a hub for South-East Asia, were the announcements in February by a host of Legal Business 100 firms of plans to enhance their presence. Most notably, Withers established a formal law alliance (FLA) with Singapore law firm KhattarWong while Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) also teamed up with a local outfit, King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) confirmed plans to open an office, while DLA Piper secured a coup with the hire of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Singapore partner John Viverito to lead its offering in the city state.

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So much for the rule of law – court fees and undermining the City

Quinn Emanuel disputes veteran Ted Greeno argues that a self-defeating stance on hiking court fees will undermine London

In their piece entitled ‘Strangling the golden goose’ last month, Nigel Boardman, James Shirbin and Andrew Blake of Slaughter and May bemoaned the cost of commercial litigation in England and suggested London’s pre-eminence as a dispute resolution centre might be under threat as a result. In making this argument, they drew upon a report from the World Bank which compared the cost and ease of doing business in 189 countries around the world. One of the activities assessed was enforcing contracts and, for this purpose, the report compares and scores the cost, time and procedures involved in enforcing a claim under a sale of goods contract around the world. The UK is ranked in 36th place, suggesting our courts are relatively uncompetitive.

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Good sports – the in-house counsel getting on the pitch in top-flight sports

Tough regulation and increasingly lucrative commercial deals have allowed in-house lawyers to flourish in sport. Legal Business scouts out the most promising performances

Trying to pin down an interview with the in-house counsel at a sports organisation is like trying to tackle Eden Hazard in full flight. Despite repeated attempts, requests for interviews with legal counsel were rebuffed by a number of big Premier League clubs – with Chelsea, for example, stating that no-one except the club’s board, manager, assistant coach and the players speak to the media.

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Human nature – cutting edge legal work looms for the drugs revolutionising healthcare

As patents for pioneering biotech drugs near expiry, life sciences companies are hunting new and controversial products. Can law firms help clients win the race?

For those close to the biotech industry, the events of a 2006 clinical trial at Northwick Park Hospital in London are etched firmly in the memory. In what was later dubbed the ‘Elephant Man’ trial, six healthy young men suffered catastrophic multiple organ failures within hours of testing a biologic – a drug created by a biological process – intended to treat leukaemia and rheumatoid arthritis. The volunteers became critically ill, including the loss of fingers and toes, after the monoclonal antibody TGN1412 caused near-fatal side effects. The drug was immediately withdrawn from development and its German-based creator TeGenero filed for insolvency four months later.

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