The new black – the spin and substance behind collaboration

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The new black – the spin and substance behind collaboration

Collaboration has become the new innovation – the quality clients are supposed to want and progressive law firms strive to deliver. Does the reality match the hype?

‘Why are so many restaurants now featuring windows that let you peek into their kitchens, or seating you as close as possible to the chefs? Because customers have decided they want to be “in the kitchen”. They want to see how the sausage is made.’

Heidi Gardner, Harvard Law School

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Simmons, BLP and Reed Smith win places on Lloyds’ specialist roster as bank gears up for commercial panel review

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Simmons, BLP and Reed Smith win places on Lloyds’ specialist roster as bank gears up for commercial panel review

Simmons & Simmons, Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), Bond Dickinson and Reed Smith are among 24 firms to win a place on Lloyds Banking Group’s (LBG) specialist sub panel, which sits below the bank’s main core roster of eight firms. Continue reading “Simmons, BLP and Reed Smith win places on Lloyds’ specialist roster as bank gears up for commercial panel review”

The business and human rights debate: The new judges

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With new legislation putting human rights on the business agenda, we teamed up with Herbert Smith Freehills to gather lawyers and experts from a range of industries to debate the key issues

In our recent Insight report on business and human rights (see Soft law, hard sanctions – Human rights laws and the next risk front facing business) – published in September in association with Herbert Smith Freehills – we noted how the arrival of the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) in the UK in 2015 has crystallised the groundswell of awareness of the human rights concerns in business. We heard from in-house human rights experts how the debate over the last 15 years had moved beyond a vague concept to which lip service had been paid to become a bona fide business consideration, combining legal liability with potentially devastating reputational risk.

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The Last Word – My way

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‘Do not come to a problem from dogma or rigid ideology.’

Tony West, PepsiCo

As part of our Insight report on GC leadership, we asked senior in-house counsel how to lead from the front

Be consistent

‘You’ve got to be conscious that you cast a powerful shadow in the team so you need to be consistent in behaviour, beliefs and core message. You need to paint a clear vision and strategy and ideally create it with the team to get buy in. A good leader stretches the team while trusting it to do its own thing.’

Suzanne Wise, group general counsel and company secretary, Network Rail

 

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Vinter is coming: Covington boosts projects offering as former BG GC returns to private practice

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Covington & Burling has landed a heavyweight in-house veteran to boost its London project finance offering with the arrival of BG Group’s former general counsel, Graham Vinter, to chair and supervise the expansion of the practice.

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Preparing for the worst: legal costs spike as FTSE 100 sets aside £31bn

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With corporate counsel consistently burdened by onerous cost constraints levied by their executive, the pressure to deliver efficiencies in-house may prove greater than ever. Newly-released data shows FTSE 100 companies have set aside £31.3bn in the last year for legal provisions, a rise of 22% from £26.5bn the year before.

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Costs of capital – senior counsel discuss hard lessons from the post-Lehman clampdown

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With regulatory focus on financial services business unrelenting, effective risk management strategies are vital. We teamed up with Cornerstone Research to assess the challenges

Nine years ago, the financial services world began undergoing seismic changes with the onset of the credit crunch that have left the industry where it is today. The aftermath led to repeated overhauls of regulation, to the extent that none are certain what the endgame might be, particularly with significant new regulation such as Basel IV being widely spoken of.

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