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41 jobs at risk at Keoghs as top 60 insurance firm blames legal services reforms

Legal services market reforms are being blamed for job losses at Bolton-based UK top 60 insurance firm Keoghs, which has put 41 people at risk of redundancy including fee earners and support staff.

The redundancies will mainly affect the firm’s Coventry office and particularly its counter-fraud services (CFS) division, as it looks to consolidate its offering for low-value fraud work in the North West.

Last year, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act banished referral fees for personal injury claims and a spokesman for Keoghs said: ‘The post-reforms market environment has yet to stabilise but it is clear that insurers’ ongoing counter-fraud requirements are going to be significantly different to what they were 12 to 18 months ago. Continue reading “41 jobs at risk at Keoghs as top 60 insurance firm blames legal services reforms”

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Deal watch: Taylor Wessing and Freshfields advise on HSBC Jordan bank deal

HSBC’s steps to streamline its business by disposing of non-core global assets has gifted Taylor Wessing and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer with a significant Middle East mandate, as Arab Jordan Investment Bank (AJIB) acquires the international retail bank’s local assets.

Taylor Wessing’s City-based corporate partner Ronald Graham advised AJIB on the deal, which constitutes one of the biggest banking agreements that Jordan has ever seen, with support from local firm Dajani & Associates. Continue reading “Deal watch: Taylor Wessing and Freshfields advise on HSBC Jordan bank deal”

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MoJ’s court fee proposals criticised by internal government review

The Ministry of Justice‘s plans to levy sizeable court fees in commercial claims have encountered a setback after the Government’s own watchdog accused the department of being unclear in its cost objectives.

The Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC), a body set up to provide the government with external independent scrutiny of regulatory proposals, this week said in an impact assessment that the MoJ’s plans were ‘not fit for purpose’ and that the department ‘needs to make clear whether the proposals will result in the Court Service raising more funds than is necessary to cover their costs’.

Continue reading “MoJ’s court fee proposals criticised by internal government review”

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Norton Rose takes pole position as McLaren drops Bakers as global legal adviser

Baker & McKenzie has lost its role as global legal adviser to British automotive group McLaren, which has opted for fellow Global 100 firm Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF).

NRF will work closely with McLaren’s in-house legal team, providing services on corporate and M&A work, as well as contractual, IP, real estate and employment law. The firm has also formed a corporate partnership with the McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 team, although the firm refused to comment on how much this tie-up would cost the firm.

Baker & McKenzie has advised McLaren since the 1980s, with annual legal fees said to be worth around £1m.

Continue reading “Norton Rose takes pole position as McLaren drops Bakers as global legal adviser”

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LLP Latest – Freshfields sees drop in equity partners and highest paid earner as Clydes grows across the board

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has become the second Magic Circle firm to release its 2012/13 limited liability partnership (LLP) filings with Companies House, revealing a drop of 5% in average equity partner numbers and a reduction in the pay packet of its highest paid member.

The LLP, which saw its 2012/13 profits fall to £312.3m from £329.1m in the previous year, while overall revenues increased by 4% to £1.23bn, saw the average number of members fall from 350 to 332. Continue reading “LLP Latest – Freshfields sees drop in equity partners and highest paid earner as Clydes grows across the board”

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LLP filings 2012/13 – DAC Beachcroft, Dentons, Olswang and Ince & Co reveal numbers

DAC Beachcroft, Dentons, Olswang and Ince & Co have joined the ranks of leading UK law firms to have filed their limited liability partnership (LLP) accounts on Companies House, with the former three all seeing an increase in their bank debt.

Dentons UKMEA LLP saw its bank loans increase by around £3m in the 2012/13 year, while profit was down 10% to £28.3m, which the firm attributed to increased marketing and administration costs stemming from its tripartite merger with Salans and Fraser Milner Casgrain.

Revenue at the top-10 firm dropped 1.5% from £144.8m to £142.8m. Continue reading “LLP filings 2012/13 – DAC Beachcroft, Dentons, Olswang and Ince & Co reveal numbers”

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Freshfields supports BITC campaign by removing criminal history question from application forms

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has opted to remove questions relating to criminal history from its job application forms in a bid to assess job seekers for its business services and support services functions on the basis of merit.

The Magic Circle firm says it is the first law firm to remove the criminal-record disclosure box from its preliminary application forms so job seekers are not excluded because of unrelated criminal convictions.

Continue reading “Freshfields supports BITC campaign by removing criminal history question from application forms”

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Former Paul Hastings litigator disbarred following Bar Standards Board appeal

A former Paul Hastings consultant and barrister has been disbarred after it emerged that he had lied about his education and qualifications, following a successful appeal by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) against the earlier decision of an independent disciplinary tribunal to suspend him.

Announced today (22 January), the BSB appealed against a disciplinary tribunal, held in late September, which ordered that litigator Dennis O’Riordan be suspended from practice for three years after it was proved he had falsified a range of qualifications and achievements, including degrees from Harvard and Oxford University.

Continue reading “Former Paul Hastings litigator disbarred following Bar Standards Board appeal”

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Guest Post: See Talent. Liberate it.

It’s been viewed online nearly seven million times. Sheryl Sandberg calls it one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley. And it was created by the company whose stock increased in 2013 more than any other’s in the S&P 500—up nearly 350%.

“It” is a 126-slide PowerPoint called ‘Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility,’ and it outlines Netflix’s approach to just that—culture—although it has primarily been interpreted as a ‘reinvention” of HR,’ as this Harvard Business Review article puts it.

Going through the entire PowerPoint (I have) is valuable in and of itself; if nothing else, you’ll see how very well done PowerPoints can be, for a change. But the HBR article, written by the former head of HR at Netflix itself, distills their approach to talent into five tenets based on two key insights into how people actually feel about performing their jobs.

Continue reading “Guest Post: See Talent. Liberate it.”

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Expansion for Global 100 giants as Bakers plans new offshoring centre and Reed Smith launches in Kazakhstan

Baker & McKenzie and Reed Smith will further extend their global footprints, with Bakers looking at another low-cost offshore base after its success in Manila while Reed Smith has today (21 January) announced a new launch in Kazakhstan with the hire of one partner each from Morgan Lewis and White & Case.

Bakers, which launched its captive offshore support centre in Manila in at the turn of the millennium, is ‘exploring options for replicating the model in other jurisdictions’ but at this time has no set timetable.

Continue reading “Expansion for Global 100 giants as Bakers plans new offshoring centre and Reed Smith launches in Kazakhstan”

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DAC Beachcroft launches New York base as part of transatlantic alliance

Its international expansion has been extensive in recent years but UK insurance firm DAC Beachcroft has complemented its push in the Americas by opening a representative office in New York to build relationships in the US.

Located at One Battery Park Plaza in Manhattan, the new office forms part of a strategic alliance with specialist New York insurance law firm, Abrams Gorelick Friedman & Jacobson (AGF&J), to work more closely together in New York and London to better serve the interests of their insurance clients.

The 1,000-lawyer, top 25 UK firm, which already has a widespread presence in Latin America, says the new Manhattan base, which opened on Monday 20 January, will promote its multi-jurisdictional insurance capabilities, especially in Latin America, and its international commercial litigation and arbitration in North America.

Continue reading “DAC Beachcroft launches New York base as part of transatlantic alliance”

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Cyber warfare – Norton Rose Fulbright hires global chief information security officer

Top ten LB100 firm Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) has moved to further protect client information with the hire the former head of cyber security for National Air Traffic Services (NATS) Paul Swarbrick as its global chief information security officer (CISO) in the London office.

Announced today (21 January), Swarbrick will join the senior management team, and work closely with IT and the business internationally to ‘strengthen proactively, and develop, a consistent approach to information assurance and cyber security worldwide,’ a firm statement said. Continue reading “Cyber warfare – Norton Rose Fulbright hires global chief information security officer”

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Financial squeeze – Morgan Stanley declares a hit to net income due to $1.2bn in legal costs

Morgan Stanley is the latest major financial institution to declare that it has been hard hit by litigation and the ripple effect of the financial crisis after it reported a fourth quarter 78% drop in net income to $192m due to legal costs and weak fixed income trading.

Revenue for the period rose from $7bn to $7.8bn but legal costs of $1.2bn meant that earnings for the quarter were almost wiped out, the FT reported on Friday (17 January).

In its report the US investment bank declared that ‘the current quarter includes $1.2 billion of additions to legal reserves for mortgage-related matters, specifically litigation and investigations related to residential mortgage-backed securities and the credit crisis.’ Continue reading “Financial squeeze – Morgan Stanley declares a hit to net income due to $1.2bn in legal costs”

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Deutsche Bank pinpoints litigation costs for wiping out its fourth quarter profits

Frankfurt-headquartered Deutsche Bank yesterday (19 January) partially blamed its full-year litigation expenses of €2.5bn for a fourth quarter pre-tax loss of €1.2bn, shortly after Morgan Stanley blamed legal costs of $1.2bn for its drop in net income during the same period.

Deutsche Bank’s litigation fees amounted to €528m for the fourth quarter.

The bank – Germany’s largest lender – in December agreed to settle its mortgage-backed securities litigation with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with a pay-out of €1.4bn. Deutsche Bank was one of 17 financial institutions the FHFA made claims against in relation to residential mortgage-backed securities.

Continue reading “Deutsche Bank pinpoints litigation costs for wiping out its fourth quarter profits”

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All grown up – HSF’s Belfast volume disputes centre pilots post-merger Australian litigation

When legacy Herbert Smith set up its volume disputes support centre in Belfast in 2011 it was, despite or perhaps because of the fact that it was at the vanguard of this kind of move, a conservatively promoted step, with initial plans to train only around 20 fee earners, including a mix of solicitors and legal assistants.

Post its merger with Freehills, the growth of this successful centre is evident as its latest pilot to roll out the use of the Belfast centre to its Australian merger partner for Australian litigation gets underway, and the fact that it has, three years later, blown its initial growth targets out of the water with 120 permanent employees, almost evenly split between qualified lawyers and legal assistants. Continue reading “All grown up – HSF’s Belfast volume disputes centre pilots post-merger Australian litigation”

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Protests and resignations but the High Court says QASA is lawful

Following months of protests from the criminal Bar including the resignation of a number of barristers from the Bar Standards Board’s (BSB’s) disciplinary panel, the High Court today (20 January) dismissed a formal judicial challenge of the controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates, ruling that the scheme is lawful.

The court found that the scheme, under which barristers may only accept trials on a par with their assessed and graded advocacy abilities, does not constitute a breach of European law and falls within the legitimate exercise of the powers of the Legal Services Board (LSB) and the three regulatory bodies that submitted it to the LSB for approval. Continue reading “Protests and resignations but the High Court says QASA is lawful”

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Breaking: Clyde & Co loses 15-strong US litigation team as two London partners exit

The expiry of Clyde & Co’s three year post-merger partner lock-in appeared to pass almost unnoticed last April but the top 20 firm has lost two London partners as its established US practice is this month hit with a 15-strong team walk out including three litigation partners.

London commercial partner Alan Meneghetti, who joined the firm five years ago as a legal director and became an aviation partner in 2010, left the firm on 31 December 2013 for Locke Lord’s corporate practice in London. Continue reading “Breaking: Clyde & Co loses 15-strong US litigation team as two London partners exit”

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DLA Piper expands Africa group across the continent with new member firms

DLA Piper‘s Africa Group has expanded in north, southern and eastern Africa with the addition of three new member firms.

Algerian firm B L & Associés, Rubeya & Co Advocates of Burundi and Namibian firm Ellis Shilengudwa Inc joined the 4200-lawyer firm’s Africa Group as of 1 October 2013. The firm now has member firms in 14 countries in Africa, and is located in 30 countries around the world.

Two-partner B L & Associés is run by Algerian-based partner Fatima Zohar Bouchemla and Paris-based partner Mohamed Lanouar and is based in Algiers. The firm also comprises eight associates, all of whom are admitted to practice in either Algeria or France.

Continue reading “DLA Piper expands Africa group across the continent with new member firms”

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Deal watch: Dentons advises Total on UK shale gas interest

As the unconventional method of extracting shale gas increasingly becomes a phenomenon in the UK, Dentons has taken the lead on advising French oil and gas corporation Total on its 40% interest in two shale gas exploration licences in the UK- the first major oil company to invest in UK shale.

The energy giant confirmed it would invest $48.1m (£29.3m) in the search for shale gas in the Gainsborough Trough area in the East Midlands region covering an area of 240 sq km.

The Dentons team was led by energy partner Danielle Beggs and environment partner Sam Boileau, alongside its energy and planning team including senior associates John Stockdale and Roy Pinnock.

Continue reading “Deal watch: Dentons advises Total on UK shale gas interest”

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High Street gloom as SRA publishes full list of uninsured firms forced to close

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has confirmed the names of the 136 firms which have been forced to close since 1 October having been unable to secure professional indemnity insurance (PII).

The list of firms, which the SRA said it has 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”