Bird & Bird has put plans in place to gain entry to a pilot scheme in China that will allow international firms to practise Chinese law for the first time.
Continue reading “The early Bird & Bird catches the worm – firm prepares to practise Chinese law”
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has hired division heads for its M&A and leveraged finance practices in a drive to increase the firm’s US footprint and increase market share in cross-border deals.
Continue reading “Freshfields hires US M&A and leveraged finance heads in New York expansion”
Magic Circle firm Clifford Chance has made a private equity push in continental Europe with the hire of Willkie Farr & Gallagher partner Fabrice Cohen in Paris, who moves as part of a three-lawyer team.
Bingham McCutchen is set to suffer the departure of a team of City partners from the firm’s trophy financial restructuring group to US rival Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld‘s London office.
Continue reading “Bingham’s City arm faces restructuring team exodus to Akin Gump”
US litigation powerhouse Boies Schiller & Flexner has hired long-serving arbitration partner Wendy Miles from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr to kick start a London arbitration practice.
Continue reading “Boies Schiller hires WilmerHale’s Miles to boost London arbitration”
It’s an unforgiving environment, but 2014 once again shows the well-captained mid-tier outfits sailing free.
‘I’m a great believer that you can always do better and however good a particular year was, you have to exceed that. And we are far from perfect.’ So says Simon Beswick, managing partner at Osborne Clarke (OC), one of the strongest performers in the Legal Business 100 (LB100) this year.
The Bristol-based firm saw turnover rise 26% in 2013/14 – the largest single increase in the LB100 – and has seen revenue rise by 69% since 2009.
Continue reading “LB100: The Second Quartile – Close Hauled”
They say averages lie, though in my experience not as much as people, but producing an annual report with 2,000 data points as we do with this month’s LB100 means it can be hard even for professional anoraks such as myself to find the nuggets of meaning in the thickets of information.
Well, when in doubt I start with the market leaders, so I dug up the numbers on London’s big four in their peak of 2008 to compare against this year’s results to see how they have changed. Continue reading “Converging on boom-time profits without a boom – the big four now and then”
Rarely, even in the conservative game of law, has so necessary a measure been so long avoided until the status quo became laughably, farcically, untenable. The move is for major law firms to start articulating public benchmarks for their proportion of female partners – corporate speak for the series of concrete targets announced this year to stem the huge outflow of talented women from the profession.
For years the profession had claimed that meritocracy and changing attitudes would feed through into higher than the circa-20% female partnerships currently at most firms; over the last five years it has become apparent how baseless that conventional wisdom was as gender diversity has barely budged. Indeed, there is some evidence that the two primary tools by which law firms increasingly manage their partnerships – lateral hiring and partner exits – are both favouring male lawyers over women and offsetting any number of women’s networks and mentoring schemes.
Continue reading “Women in law – A belated bandwagon, but still welcome”
Last year delivering our annual results issue Legal Business remarked that the age of turbulence facing law firms since the 2008 banking crisis was far from over. And so it has proved. Despite all the talk of returning confidence, and clear evidence of recovery in the UK economy, it’s still choppy out there. Stripping out another year of consolidation, the numbers are a little better than 2013 but that’s about it. Mergers have driven the market to nearly £21bn in revenues but average partner profit of £640,000 across the top 100 is still a way off the all-time peak of £703,000 recorded in 2008. The world’s second largest legal market is tracking inflation.
Continue reading “LB100 2014: Statistically speaking, you may not need a bigger boat”
Eduardo Leite looks set to be re-appointed as chairman of Baker & McKenzie shortly after it regained its position as the world’s largest law firm. Leite, who took charge of the US-bred practice in 2010, has faced no opposition for the post and partners at the firm understand his re-election will be a formality.
His next term is expected to be confirmed by partners during the firm’s upcoming annual meeting in London in October. Bakers typically looks to extend leadership positions on a rolling basis, with Leite set to stay on as chairman for between two and four further years.
Continue reading “Bakers’ Leite set for second term leading world’s largest law firm”
While the headline Legal Business 100 (LB100) results are once again inflated by significant merger activity at every level, there is evidence that many of the top 100 grossing firms in the UK are enjoying organic growth again.
Total revenue for the LB100 for 2013/14 is £20.82bn, an increase of 9%, while lawyer headcount swelled 6% to 65,111. With revenue growth slightly faster than 2012/13 but headcount growth slower, average revenue per lawyer (RPL), profit per lawyer (PPL) and profit per equity partner (PEP) were all up by 3% to £320,000, £98,000 and £640,000 respectively.
Continue reading “Reviving deal market lifts LB100 as top UK firms edge up profits and fees”
Weil, Gotshal & Manges has paid over £3m to settle a professional negligence claim made against it in late 2013 by private equity house Bancroft.
The case was set to be heard before the commercial court in July but the US law firm agreed a confidential settlement that Legal Business understands to be between £3m and £5m.
Consolidating firms are jostling for position in the race to dominate international and UK markets. But even amid fairer conditions, the course to victory is uncertain.
‘To reach a port we must set sail –
Sail, not tie at anchor
Sail, not drift.’
Franklin D Roosevelt, 1938
‘One feels from the body language out there that firms which have come through the recession successfully are beginning to unwind, beginning to stretch a bit, beginning to feel as though more business is coming back – particularly in the corporate market. The corporate partners who had to lay low for some years are starting to unfurl their wings a little bit and ruffle their feathers.’
Having endured a difficult time in recent months with an exodus of partners from its London office, US law firm Edwards Wildman Palmer published its UK limited liability partnership (LLP) accounts in August, which recorded a 10% drop in UK turnover, alongside a 21% drop in profit.
The LLP accounts, dated to 31 December 2013, show revenue fell to £25.1m from £27.8m, operating profit decreased to £8m from £10.1m and net debt rose to £323,827 from £54,952.
Latest proposed changes by Magic Circle firm after recent overhaul of governance structure
Having taken the summer to vote through a substantive overhaul of its governance structure, the autumn agenda of Clifford Chance (CC) will see the partnership consider whether the firm should move to an all-equity model.
The Magic Circle firm currently deploys a single profit pool, lockstep system and partners spend three years as juniors before progressing onto the equity, which ranges between 40 and 100 units.
Ambrose Lam, president of the Hong Kong Law Society since May last year, was forced to resign on 19 August after a vote of no confidence was issued in response to his recent support of a Beijing white paper that raised issues over Hong Kong’s judicial independence. Hong Kong lawyers turned out in force on 14 August to an extraordinary general meeting (EGM), where 2,392 lawyers cast a vote of no confidence in the president. Just 1,478 lawyers voted against the motion, despite law firms reporting pressure from clients on the mainland not to pass the motion.
Mishcon de Reya is set to bring all partners into the equity and convert to a limited liability partnership at the end of autumn 2015. The proposed new model will constitute a marked shift from the firm’s current structure, which consists of legal directors, junior (or fixed-share) partners and senior (equity) partners.
The transformation will see every partner become a form of equity partner, the current 37 become ‘senior equity partners’ and junior partners will be ‘junior equity partners’.
Continue reading “Mishcons set to move to full-equity LLP in 2015”
Michael West finds mixed feelings on independence from Scotland’s bloodied legal profession
It’s long been a hoary cliché to say that uncertainty is good news for the legal profession but it is hard to escape the conclusion that the uncertain prospect of a momentous vote on Scottish independence this month would be very good news for local lawyers… in the short term.
The landmark Yukos decision has forced governments to consider the consequences of entering into international treaties that allow foreign investors to take disputes to arbitration. With the likes of Indonesia and South Africa having already torn up agreements, Russia having withdrawn from the Energy Charter Treaty that gave the Yukos shareholders jurisdiction and India mulling an exit from bilateral investment treaties, could the $50bn award lead more states to withdraw their consent to arbitration?
Ireland is breathing a little easier again. With more than five years of economic turbulence battering both businesses and reputations, the nation has finally managed to hoist itself out of recession. Having officially exited its €67.5bn bailout programme in December 2013 – a move described by finance minister Michael Noonan as Ireland being ‘handed back her purse’ – this summer also saw the Central Statistics Office announce economic growth of 2.7% for the first quarter of 2014.
While the situation is still deemed perilous in many parts, with a mammoth public deficit, a woeful property market and high unemployment, a sense of confidence is returning to Ireland’s legal elite. And such is the battle-hardened resilience of the young lawyers that made partner around the time the economy crumbled – including those at Arthur Cox, McCann FitzGerald, A&L Goodbody, William Fry, Matheson and others – that a crop of up-and-coming individuals are emerging as the next generation of stars to define Ireland’s legal market in the years ahead. Continue reading “Ireland: Tracking Dublin’s Young Tigers”
