Hogan Lovells has expanded its Latin America offering by launching a second office in Brazil, hiring former Clifford Chance (CC) partner Isabel Costa Carvalho.
Its new São Paulo office will operate as a foreign legal consultancy, offering services to local and international companies and banks after the Brazilian Bar Association awarded the global law firm a licence to practise in the region in July 2013.
SRA aims to bring maximum fines for law firms closer to the much higher figures for ABSs
Further tensions in the Law Society’s already strained relationship with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) emerged in January as the representative body prepares to contest its regulatory arm’s attempt to increase its fining powers over law firms.
In a consultation that ends this month, the SRA has invited views on its proposal to increase the current level of fining powers over City and regional firms to as much as £100,000. However, the Law Society said it has ‘concerns over the functioning of the enforcement team within the SRA’.
New Year surge in high-value deals after subdued year
While deal activity was down again in 2013, last year’s growth in confidence in the corporate sector, together with fundraising activity among a number of large private equity houses, has seen some of the UK’s elite firms advise on high-value deals announced in January, including Amec’s $3.2bn acquisition of Swiss rival Foster Wheeler.
The Linklaters team advising Amec was led by corporate finance partner Shane Griffin, alongside fellow corporate partner Aedamar Comiskey. Scott Sonnenblick and Tom Shropshire are advising on US law aspects of the deal from New York and London respectively, while John Tucker and Simon Pritchard are leading on finance and antitrust issues.
Continue reading “UK elite firms defy the transactional gloom of 2013”
Year-long study by legal technology body identifies future challenges
Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics will play a game-changing role within the legal sector as law firms emerge from a decade where they began to understand the power of technology, and to recognise they now have to put it at the heart of their business.
These are key findings of the Legal Technology Future Horizons study, a report into how global advances in technology could impact the legal industry over the next decade. Commissioned by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), the report is based on research conducted between January and November 2013 and was released last month.
Bujalski promoted to head of legal as Handford joins Couchmans
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) has reconfigured its in-house legal team, promoting in-house lawyer Angus Bujalski (pictured) to head of legal following the recent departure of Polly Handford to become a partner at sports law firm Couchmans.
Former Slaughter and May lawyer Bujalski will report directly to the organisation’s legal and governance director, Karena Vleck. While Vleck has oversight of legal as well as other sports-related areas such as player discipline, Bujalski will have specific responsibility for the legal function. Continue reading “RFU rejigs legal team as deputy head joins sports firm”
Increasing confidence in the transactional market has contributed to a rash of senior partner moves at the start of 2014, with the UK’s leading firms bolstering both their London and international practices.
In the City, upwardly mobile US practices continued to boost their capability with Weil, Gotshal & Manges hiring Hogan Lovells banking and finance partner Chris McLaughlin, who has extensive experience of cross-border private equity buyouts and European real estate acquisitions and restructuring. His hire came a week after Latham & Watkins hired Weil Gotshal funds partner Nick Benson, its fifth City hire within the past 12 months.
Adam Smith, Esq’s Bruce MacEwen argues that short-termism and a lack of stewardship has come to define the modern law firm
To judge from the way law firms behave – it’s helpfully instructive to ignore what they say – the answer to the rhetorical question of the above headline is: ‘Who gives a fig?’
Consider the following facts and ask yourself what philosophy of management underlies and ties all law firms together:
Continue reading “DISSENT: Where do you want your firm to be in 2020?”
It’s been an amazing career. I’ve been with Clifford Chance (CC) for 40 years. People had just stopped wearing bowler hats when I started, I was relieved to notice. What I remember was being in Royex House at Coward Chance. No air conditioning – we used to bake in the summer. People used to go out for lunches and have a bottle of wine a head and work in the afternoons.
I remember watching then senior partners walking in at ten in the morning. They’d go for a long lunch with clients and go home at three. I thought one day that might be my life. Of course, it never has been my life. The City has changed completely.
As global and domestic firms look to end the 2013/14 financial year on a high, we ask senior management figures for their anticipated performance and what their focus will be for the year ahead.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) last month confirmed the names of the 136 firms which have been forced to close since 29 December, having not secured professional indemnity insurance (PII).
The list of firms, which the SRA said it published in the interests of protecting consumers and third parties, includes Alastair J Brett, the London-based firm set up by the former legal director of The Times newspaper, who was recently suspended over the Nightjack case.
Continue reading “High Street gloom as SRA publishes full list of uninsured firms forced to close”
The Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO’s) somewhat fraught efforts to redefine itself by focusing on higher profile, higher risk complex fraud, bribery and corruption cases yesterday (30 January) led the organisation to ask the Government for emergency funding of £19m.
The request for ‘blockbuster funding’ is to help bankroll large international investigations including Libor, Barclays Qatar and Rolls Royce and in the defence of a multi-million pound damages claim brought by the Tchenguiz brothers. Continue reading “Regulatory: Embattled SFO requests £19m emergency funding for ‘blockbuster’ litigation”
As KPMG looks to expand its legal services practice the Big Four accountant has hired DLA Piper corporate partner Nick Roome to head its legal services arm in Manchester in what it says is the first of a series of hires planned over the course of this year.
Roome, who has broad corporate, private equity and commercial legal expertise with a focus on the north of England and international markets, qualified with Addleshaws in 2000 before moving to DLA Piper’s Manchester office in 2005. He will start his new role in the late Spring. Continue reading “Senior hires: KPMG appoints DLA partner as Manchester legal head as A&O and NRF lose partners to HogLove and Vedder Price”
After a tough three years Maclay Murray & Spens’ (MMS) chief executive Chris Smylie is to step down from his role, with corporate head Kenneth Shand to take over the reins of a firm which has seen revenue drop 33% since its £61.1m high in 2008 but is now executing significant changes out of a root and branch strategic review.
Smylie, who has chosen not to stand for a second term, will return to his role as a partner in MMS’ planning team. In the interim, he will work with Shand to ensure a smooth transition to becoming CEO in June. Continue reading “Leadership: Maclay Murray & Spens CEO Smylie to step down as Shand takes the reins”
Addleshaw Goddard and Linklaters will sit alongside incumbent advisers Allen & Overy and Eversheds on Nationwide‘s new legal panel as the building society today (31 January) concluded its first review since putting together its first-ever roster in 2009.
Burges Salmon, Nabarro and Olswang have all lost their place on the group-wide legal panel for the building society, which started its review process last summer, led by group general counsel Liz Kelly, after plans to start the review in early 2013 were delayed.
In a potentially game-changing move for the legal market PwC has today (31 January) received approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority to become an Alternative Business Structure, meaning that it can directly own limited liability partnership, PwC Legal, bringing together its circa 2,000 global lawyer network.
The only one of the Big Four accountants to maintain a serious legal offering since the withdrawal of the likes of KPMG shortly after the turn of the century, PwC said last year that it was looking at a number of different options in the legal sector including conversion to an ABS, which will allow it to offer a more joined up service with its, until now, entirely separate legal arm. Continue reading “Game changer: PwC receives approval from regulator to become an ABS”
Welcome to Legal Business’ second annual GC Power List, which follows up on our successful launch last year. While we already knew we wanted the Power List to be an ongoing strand for Legal Business and its sister title The In-House Lawyer, reflecting the growing clout of in-house lawyers, attentive readers will note a shift in format from 2013. Since we didn’t feel the most influential senior general counsel (GC) would materially change in the space of 12 months, we decided it would be more worthwhile to this year focus on the rising stars of in-house legal. Continue reading “Rising Stars for 2014 – Introduction”
Twelve months ago, when Legal Business’s inaugural GC Power List landed, the global economic outlook was still decidedly bleak. Talk of a double-dip recession had started to feel like blind optimism, with global manufacturing output at its lowest level since 2009, unemployment in the eurozone at epidemic proportions and signs that the Chinese economic engine was beginning to falter.
A year on and there’s cause for cautious optimism, in the UK at least, with joblessness falling and it seems more reason for economists to be bullish about the strength of the recovery than for half a decade. Continue reading “Rising Stars for 2014 – RPC”
National Grid‘s group general counsel (GC) Alison Kay (pictured) has launched a wholesale review of the FTSE 100 energy giant’s in-house and external legal function, which will look at whether the internal legal team is delivering the right services and adding value to the business, as well as a potential shake-up of both its UK and US external law firm panel.
The current UK panel, which was put together in 2011 when National Grid cut its roster of firms by 25% to 16, includes Allen & Overy, Linklaters, DLA Piper, Eversheds, CMS Cameron McKenna, Berwin Leighton Paisner and Field Fisher Waterhouse.
We are now a little over two years since the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) began accepting applications from would-be alternative business structures (ABSs), and a little under two years since it issued the first licences. I have a sense that some are disappointed and a little underwhelmed by what has happened since then.
In the main they shouldn’t be – the transient nature of news, has made people forget just how many interesting and different legal services providers have emerged in the last two years. But from one perspective, and I will come back to this later, I can see their point. Continue reading “Guest comment: That legal big bang – still waiting for the Dyson moment”
