Comment: The national market – brutally competitive but opportunity abounds

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At one point in our Regional Insight report – a major collaboration with our colleagues at The Legal 500 included with this issue of Legal Business – one GC based in the North West discusses a recent pitch in which a City law firm came out best on price against regional rivals. Surprising as it may seem, it is reflective of a dynamic that has seen London advisers focus on handling work from UK regions after realising that simply aspiring to be a City leader is a road to nowhere for many firms.

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Guest post: An immigration lawyer reviews Paddington and gives him some advice

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Law is pretty abstract. Unlike the role of a doctor or a builder, that of a lawyer is difficult to explain to a young mind. When my children eventually ask me about what I do when I ‘work’ (confusingly simultaneously a place I seem to go to and a thing I do at home; either takes me away from them) my plan is to explain that I help strangers from far off places find new homes. Like Paddington Bear.

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How was it for you? – the people and events that defined the profession over 25 years of Legal Business

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25 years ago Legal Business was launched to chronicle a rapidly changing profession in the wake of Big Bang. We look back to identify 25 defining figures, events and trends that shaped a world-beating profession.

The curious nature of the legal industry means that as radically as things seem to change, they stay the same. In January 1990 the City was still being defined by the Big Bang de-regulation of London’s financial services market, even though boom was rapidly turning to bust. Leading City law firms were still basically domestic practices built around English practices with limited branch networks. An elite City law firm would not have generated much more than £100m in a good year. That scale and internationalisation would change in the coming decade – for all the talk of supposedly radical upheaval in the modern legal industry – the shake-up in the profession seen in the 1990s at the very least matches and probably outdoes anything that has happened since the turn of the millennium.

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Legal Business celebrates 25 years and the profession as well

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So, what mattered to you? Twenty five years since Legal Business launched to chronicle the dramatic changes in the legal profession much has changed and yet stays the same. Still, if you were going to launch the first publication to focus on the UK’s commercial legal sector, you couldn’t have picked a better time than 1990.

That decade was an incredible time for the profession. Primed by the twin forces of London’s Big Bang and the equally explosive phenomenon of the newly-merged Clifford Chance (CC), the 1990s had the lot: globalisation, drama, ambition, innovation, mergers, disaggregation, technology, accountants and DLA. Destinies were won and lost. By the end of the decade the profession was different. CC stands out – someone with a longer attention span than I should write a book on the firm in that era – it was an incredible institution, without question then the world’s most influential law firm. Continue reading “Legal Business celebrates 25 years and the profession as well”

Shaping the industry – the veterans’ view on what mattered in the last 25 years

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Legal Business asked more than 20 legal heavyweights to name the defining moments that shaped the profession since the launch of Legal Business.

Wim Dejonghe, managing partner, Allen & Overy

On globalisation in law:

‘Domestic firms going global – this has been the main event of the last 25 years. That started in the mid-1990s and there has been no way back. Baker & McKenzie was a pioneer of the globalisation trend. It has done extremely well in its market. Two firms that have come from a regional base and developed well include DLA Piper – coming from [the English regions] is impressive – and Latham & Watkins from LA. Given their position 25 years ago and where they are now, these three firms come to mind.’
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The profession – our part in its downfall

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In our 25-year anniversary coverage, Cass Business School’s Laura Empson repeats a familiar refrain about the negative impact of the legal media on the profession’s values in creating league tables, particularly those on the profitability of law firms.

There is nothing new about assertions that such rankings inflicted a huge cost to the ethos of the profession, stoking excess, greed and a culture of mobile stars. Legal Business is arguably the most directly responsible since it was the publication that in 1992 brought law firm financial rankings to the UK.

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The national market – brutally competitive but opportunity abounds

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At one point in our Regional Insight report – a major collaboration with our colleagues at The Legal 500 included with this issue of Legal Business – one GC based in the North West discusses a recent pitch in which a City law firm came out best on price against regional rivals. Surprising as it may seem, it is reflective of a dynamic that has seen London advisers focus on handling work from UK regions after realising that simply aspiring to be a City leader is a road to nowhere for many firms.

This shift in focus comes with the acknowledgement that post-Lehman, demand for external law firm services in the UK has become more polarised. The need for high-end transactional and disputes advice still exists but is increasingly now the preserve of the elite firms in those fields in London. At the opposite end, in-house teams are retaining more work and will only outsource work to law firms if it is cost effective.

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The UK’s changing legal landscape

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Fox Rodney’s Adrian Fox analyses UK legal market trends.

How have commercial dynamics in law firms changed?
I was practising in the mid-1980s when law firm commercial dynamics really changed – the time of the Big Bang. I remember having a more than slightly heated discussion with a then senior partner of my firm about whether a law firm’s purpose was to service its clients or make profits for the partners. He was from the old school and he had gone within 12 months.

What has most defined the legal landscape in the last 25 years?
The rise in prominence of US firms is the single most important feature that has defined the legal landscape over the last 25 years. When the majority started to open in London in the mid-1990s, they often set up in the West End (as near as possible to Lady Diana) and they also thought Brussels would be the next DC. It was quite quaint back then. How times have changed. Alongside this, the demise of lockstep has been a central theme.

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Guest post: money or culture? What culture really means to law firms

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Circling in the wings around almost any discussion of management and leadership issues in law firms, sometimes touted as a virtue above all others and sometimes only alluded to with caution, as one might a wraith, is the issue of a firm’s ‘culture’.

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