Inside KWM’s rescue deal: Management guarantee minimum earnings as salaried partners also tapped for cash

As the European and Middle East partnership of King & Wood Mallesons considers a rescue plan to stabilise the business, Legal Business can reveal the firm has made a cash call to salaried partners, and guaranteed minimum earnings to equity partners.

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Linklaters latest firm to review remuneration model as US pay pressure mounts

With Magic Circle rivals Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer having recently remodelled their remuneration structures following pay pressure from more profitable US firms, Linklaters has plans of its own.

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What goes up: Linklaters to vote next month on new partner pay model

Moore pulls together proposals for flexible model as lockstep set to evolve

With Magic Circle rivals Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer having recently remodelled their remuneration structures following pay pressure from more profitable US firms, Linklaters has plans of its own.

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Faraway, so close – two visions of nearshoring

With even Freshfields unveiling plans to put hundreds of staff in Manchester, we teamed up with Scottish Development International to assess the rush to nearshore. Is it driven by costs or a deeper rethinking of the legal industry?

To say Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s launch of a support and legal services centre in Manchester was one of the biggest stories of 2015 would be an understatement. While back-office outsourcing and legal process outsourcing had legal process outsourcing had been the subject of much debate within the profession for years and the modern era of northshoring by global law firms was pioneered by Allen & Overy (A&O) and Herbert Smith in 2011, news that the 270-year-old Freshfields is to house up to 300 support and legal staff in Manchester by next year sent reverberations around the City. A&O had done that already in Belfast – and delivered significant cost savings to boot – but this was Freshfields, the most conservative of London’s Big Four.

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Comment: Lockstep has to go for Magic Circle to enter new global elite

Conservatism and intransigence are qualities often bemoaned in the legal industry, in many cases beyond their manifestation. But there is one aspect in which the upper reaches of City law have shown a resistance to change verging on the surreal: the desperate embrace of a highly restrictive model of lockstep.

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Guest post: Pricing Power… and how to convert it into profit

The growth of professionals in Law Land with the word ‘pricing’ in their title has been explosive over the past couple of years. It’s a trend we applaud loudly and fervently, so perhaps it’s worth a primer on how it’s done in the major leagues: When B2B companies with thousands of SKU’s (Stock Keeping Unit) and tens or even hundreds of thousands of individual prices engage in ‘pricing-excellence’ programs.

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Income up for the top 100 law firms but top 10 see slide as Deloitte records differing fortunes in the first quarter

Accountancy giant Deloitte has recorded reduced fee income for the top 10 UK law firms in the first quarter of 2014/15, with a 2.7% fall as a result of a 2.1% decrease in fee earner headcount alongside a decline in sterling rates as a consequence of the strong pound.

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