We’re just back from a week in London – coincidentally smack in the middle of the UK firms’ earnings-release season – and for reasons far more profound than that annual roll call of bragging rights, the level of preoccupation with the future in the great City has never to us seemed higher to us. A telling, and extremely representative, moment came when one managing partner we were meeting with started to enumerate the threats facing his (very solidly performing) firm as, ‘One,…., and two…., and – oh hell, there are threats everywhere!’
Marking your own homework: Dentons and a defence of PEP
Alex Novarese takes a jaded view of the latest attempt to avoid transparency
It would almost be too easy to pick holes in the letter that Dentons has supplied to the media to justify its attempt to withhold its profits on the basis of Olympian high principle. But I won’t let that stop me.
The letter, authored by Dentons’ chief executive Elliott Portnoy and chair Joe Andrew, sets out a number of arguments as to why Dentons won’t disclose basic information on the profitability and the margins on which it operates. Without exception, they lack substance, though to varying degrees. Indeed, it’s notable that Dentons largely fails to make any of the credible arguments for not supplying figures on profit per equity partner (PEP).
Continue reading “Marking your own homework: Dentons and a defence of PEP”
Guest post: Is sustainability improving corporate and professional ethics?
The ethical dimensions of in-house practice are a significant source of academic and practical interest, as the recent investigation of GM suggests. I have the pleasure of doing two projects where I engage with in-house lawyers on ethical questions: one on the ethics of legal practice and the other on legal risk. So it was with great interest that I read Bond Dickinson report Beyond Responsibility: The emerging role of legal counsel in sustainable business. Continue reading “Guest post: Is sustainability improving corporate and professional ethics?”
Comment: Marking your own homework, Dentons and a defence of PEP
It would almost be too easy to pick holes in the letter that Dentons has supplied to the media to justify its attempt to withhold its profits on the basis of Olympian high principle. But I won’t let that stop me. Continue reading “Comment: Marking your own homework, Dentons and a defence of PEP”
Comment: Cameronics redux – a hard-to-grasp institution that looks set to surprise
Given that I get paid to poke around law firms’ inner workings, it’s not that often that I find it hard to get my head around a law firm but CMS Cameron McKenna in its 2014 form is one such creature. Continue reading “Comment: Cameronics redux – a hard-to-grasp institution that looks set to surprise”
Cameronics redux: a hard-to-grasp institution that looks set to surprise
Given that I get paid to poke around law firms’ inner workings, it’s not that often that I find it hard to get my head around a law firm but CMS Cameron McKenna in its 2014 form is one such creature.
The clichéd view of the firm is of a slow-moving practice struggling with a hard-to-sell international alliance and a classic case of chasing pack malaise – too close to the Magic Circle for comfort, but too big to have the lean focus of a quality mid-tier. Like most clichés there is more than a grain of truth in this view but, as Camerons absorbs Scotland’s most storied law firm Dundas & Wilson, at closer glance the truth looks far more complex and interesting.
Continue reading “Cameronics redux: a hard-to-grasp institution that looks set to surprise”
DISSENT: A self-deceiving return to business as usual
RSG’s Reena SenGupta argues an improving economic climate is leading top law firms to wrongly assume the ‘new’ normal is the same as the old one
In 2010, Georgetown University, under the direction of Professor Milton Regan, held a conference of academics, practitioners and leading thinkers on the profession. To delegates, the atmosphere was heady; change was palpable in the room.
There were no dissenting voices. People knew that there was no turning back for the legal profession. Legal services would be unbundled, equity structures in law firms would change, clients would exert their buying power and demand radically different fee arrangements, Chinese law firms would stride onto the global stage and new technologies and service providers would fundamentally alter the law firm business model. It was going to be, as the title of the conference predicted, a brave new world.
Continue reading “DISSENT: A self-deceiving return to business as usual”
Pastures new: Legal Business hits Fleet Street while Legalease welcomes a key new hire
After a decade based in Ansdell Street in leafy Kensington, Legal Business and the entire Legalease family are moving to more central, larger premises in Fleet Street.
Comment: Whose money making machine? Not all law firms will be richer in a bank-lite world
Cov-lite, cov-loose and even now cov-lame – in some pockets of the finance market we are back to the boom days. All we need is a couple of headstrong private equity partners to quit Linklaters for a more sponsor-facing platform and we’ll be right back to 2006. On second thoughts… Continue reading “Comment: Whose money making machine? Not all law firms will be richer in a bank-lite world”
‘It is now the strain will show on firms’: Gordon Dadds MP talks takeovers and strategy after the fall of Davenport Lyons
After a series of failed merger talks, the surprise takeover of beleaguered West End firm Davenport Lyons by Gordon Dadds is, according to Gordon Dadds’ managing partner Adrian Biles, indicative of the wider strain that firms will start to feel as the recovery kicks in. Continue reading “‘It is now the strain will show on firms’: Gordon Dadds MP talks takeovers and strategy after the fall of Davenport Lyons”