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Leadership changes: Dentons’ UKMEA chief and HFW managing partner to stand down

Just weeks after announcing its audacious entry into the Chinese legal market with local firm Dacheng, Dentons has confirmed that longstanding UKMEA chief executive Matthew Jones will not seek re-appointment in his managerial role when his term ends in March. Insurance-focused Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW) also announced a leadership change today (9 February), appointing a new managing partner to take over from George Eddings.

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Investing in London: Cooley sets City agenda with turnover targets and committee appointments

Having made its audacious entrance into London’s legal market in January, US tech giant Cooley has begun rolling out the agenda for its new 55-lawyer UK practice, including appointing two City lawyers to its management committee, a further two to its compensation committee, and setting a revenue target for the team.

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Global Law Summit misses the mark and a big opportunity

Here at Legal Business we like to set the agenda, so we’re feeling ahead of the game in pointing out shortcomings with this month’s Global Law Summit, the government-backed initiative to celebrate the 800-year anniversary of Magna Carta and British traditions of the rule of law.

The event has been attracting mounting controversy, including last month a scatter-gun attack in The Telegraph (who knew that Telegraph Media Group were such staunch socialists?) and wider criticism of elitism (some fair, some not).

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Pinsents and the confidence dividend – successful law firms need a spring in their step

There are lots of factors that are supposed to have a major role in the success of a law firm that on closer examination are hard to sustain. Issues in this camp include remuneration models, culture, strategy and a specific practice mix. What this list has in common is that there is no right answer – all that matters is what you are doing is appropriate to what you are trying to achieve and the markets that you are working in (and even then it’s less central than supposed). You can be lockstep, eat-what-you kill, collegial or aggressive – it works for some and flops for others. Just look at the extent that the Magic Circle has elevated one particular model of lockstep into some half-baked sacred tenant, with disastrous consequences.

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What a ‘combination’! Dentons Dacheng pushes the concept of a firm

In January 2005 DLA Piper hooked up with US duo Piper Rudnick and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, triggering a debate that looks no more resolved as I type these words in January 2015. The issue boils down to: what is a firm? And can unions between legal practices maintaining separate finances, partnerships and governance be considered by clients, staff, peers and regulators to be a single institution?

The debate has only become more intense given the string of verein-based tie-ups since 2009. Hard and fast rules are elusive. In reality some – notably Hogan Lovells and in recent years DLA Piper – operate as a single institution. But with some other firms, discerning the nature of the merger, sorry ‘combination’ – the word increasingly bandied around to reconcile these conflicting realities – is a challenge.

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Strategy review puts US merger and new office launches on HSF agenda

Further New York growth and Washington DC offering on the cards

Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) is accelerating its US development plans, launching consultations to explore a US merger and office openings outside of New York.

The performance of HSF’s New York office has exceeded early expectations after landing a number of large white-collar investigations and helping to win the firm a role advising JP Morgan Chase on the Asia end of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s probe into whether the bank hiring the offspring of powerful Chinese officials helped it to win work in the country, as US regulators ramp up their checks on New York-based investment banks’ activities in Asia.

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Reckitt Benckiser group GC Mordan looks to review and formalise panel

Reckitt Benckiser (RB) is making plans to carry out a UK panel review, with Bill Mordan, senior vice president and group general counsel (GC), also looking to formalise the company’s current panel arrangement.

The multinational consumer goods company currently has an informal panel arrangement in the UK, which consists of a two-tier system of seven firms. Tier one comprises Magic Circle firms Slaughter and May, Allen & Overy and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, while tier two includes firms such as Eversheds and, in particular, Thrings’ office in Swindon, which support contract work, negotiations and some civil disputes.

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Shearman & Sterling plans first African office opening

Firm prepares for association in Egypt with energy focus

US law firm Shearman & Sterling is preparing to open an office in Egypt, marking the firm’s first foray into Africa with plans for an international arbitration and projects practice.

Shearman, which has a five-partner office in Abu Dhabi handling project finance and arbitration work, and a satellite operation in Dubai, is hoping to extend its on-the-ground presence in Egypt as investors return to the country after the revolution in 2011.

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Addleshaw Goddard to establish flexible resourcing capability after strategy revamp

Addleshaw Goddard (AG) is looking to establish a flexible resourcing capability by creating a pool of qualified lawyers and paralegals to backfill gaps in services left by lawyers seconded to clients or where extra capacity is needed for discrete assignments.

The firm has already spoken to recruiters about setting up a roster of flexible workers and may expand its use in the future. It is understood that the new flexible resourcing will form part of the client development centre (CDC) headed up by key clients senior manager Greg Bott, although after an initial pilot, progress is still in the early stages. The model is seen as a first step to potentially offering a flexi-working service to clients, similar to those offered by Berwin Leighton Paisner’s Lawyers On Demand (LOD) and Pinsent Masons’ Vario network. A spokesperson for the firm added: ‘This is just one of many initiatives that we are looking at to improve our agility and operational effectiveness.’

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Tackling ‘passive disobedience’: Layton sets CC course with new strategy

CC international plan for increases in US and Asia revenue

With the partnership keen to improve retention rates and eager to re-establish itself as an iconoclastic, ambitious and imaginative business, Clifford Chance (CC) managing partner Matthew Layton has laid out the firm’s international strategy, which includes greater focus on client satisfaction, making new leadership appointments, and increasing US and Asia revenues to approximately 20% and 25% respectively over five years.

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Weil tops City partner promotions at leading Global London firms

US firms continue to break ground in London and are increasingly investing in moving their City lawyers up the partnership ranks.

Three out of Global London’s top ten US firms made over a fifth of their partner promotions in the City. Weil, Gotshal & Manges led the way with the highest percentage of partner promotions in January, having a total of 33% of its promotions round in the City. The firm recently announced strong partner profits – up 16.5% in 2014 after two disappointing years of falling profits – and stated its restructuring, finance and transactional practices in London were performing well.

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