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Goodbye transformative merger, hello smart deal
It’s rather depressing how many partners want their management teams to obtain shrinkwrapped deals that will magically propel their firm to a new market position. The national practice wanting a...
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In litigation, there is no magic circle
Our annual Top 20 cases feature this week unveils the biggest forthcoming cases of the year, the ones every advocate at the commercial bar wants to be involved in. This year, big beasts like Herbert...
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The Hot 100: Champions of champions
Look at the pictures. Our annual Hot 100 brings much joy to many: not only the lawyers, but also their mums and the PRs. And it’s a wonderfully uncynical exercise, in which we find 100 exceptional...
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Day of reckoning looms for UK firms
Matt Byrne, deputy editorFor those with long memories there might seem to be nothing new in this week’s feature about the rise of the accountants. True, this time the tone of PwC, EY and KPMG suggests...
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Time to put all that money to work
Joanne Harris, news editorIt’s the middle of US law firm reporting season and the giants of the legal world are confirming their 2015 financial results. While a lot of firms had a good year in terms of...
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A merger that will take leap of faith for BLP partners
Catrin Griffiths, editorFor a man who declines to comment on the detail of the merger negotiations with BLP, Greenberg Traurig executive chairman Richard Rosenbaum is pretty forthcoming on where his...
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An Africa office is no magic door to deals
Margaret Taylor, senior writerIt’s a few years since international firms started turning their attention to Africa, when a slowdown in Asia coupled with Africa’s burgeoning middle class and abundant...
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Parabis lost: a cautionary tale
There’s a lot to digest in this week’s cover story. In short, the collapse of Parabis is a cautionary tale for management in any business, not just those in the admittedly tightly squeezed insurance...
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The known unknowns in Dentons’ game
Since the January 2015 merger between Dentons and China’s Dacheng scarcely a week has gone by without the ‘world’s largest law firm’ hitting the headlines. Last year the firm carried out seven mergers...
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It’s just not working: time to transform allocation methods
The illustration for our big feature this week was very nearly a caveman bashing an iPhone with a rock. We refrained in the end, but it’s odd to think that modern-day law firms – some of the most...
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BT’s legal team made the right call
Matt Byrne, deputy editorWelcome to the BT issue. Well, ok, this week’s mag is not entirely devoted to the UK’s biggest telecoms giant, but it’s not far off. And to be fair, when it comes to BT,...
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Oh Manchester, so much to answer for
Catrin Griffiths, editorIn March pretty much the entire editorial team of The Lawyer spent a week in Manchester. We came away certain of several things. First things first: sorry Birmingham and sorry...
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Partner promotions centre on the City
Matt Byrne, deputy editorPartner promotions are only a single lens through which to assess the strategies of the UK’s leading overseas-headquartered firms, but they’re an important one. There have...
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Euro firms go global
Joanne Harris, news editorAfter a year of buoyant M&A activity and a continued flow of contentious and restructuring work, the financial results for the biggest European firms are in – and it was...
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Warsaw, Manila and the ethics of offshoring: why are firms fudging the issue?
Catrin Griffiths, editorThere’s a bonfire going on. In the past week 420 business services jobs have been put into consultation: 170 from Norton Rose, which is ‘relocating roles’ to Manila, and 50...
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A firm that refuses to join the global race
Matt Byrne, deputy editorHow’s your platform? Or your global coverage? Or, indeed, your bench strength? Most big firms these days obsess over these supposed indicators of legal market leadership, if...
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Global consolidation: the myth that just won’t go away
Catrin Griffiths, editorTheories can be attractive, but they’re quite often useless. Take this one: that international law firms will consolidate in a similar way to the accountancy firms and dominate...
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Accountants lead the AsiaPac pack
Catrin Griffiths, editorIs Asia turning out to be a headache? This week we publish our annual Asia-Pacific 150, which follows hard on the heels of our new Global 200. As you have come to expect from...
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Paralegals are hard workers, not minions
When was the last time you were a minion? If you are a typical reader of The Lawyer the answer is probably a long time ago, if ever. Even as a lowly trainee or pupil you were one of the favoured...
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Pointless pay rises can’t buy loyalty
Richard Simmons, Careers editorBack in 2007 The Lawyer and YouGov partnered up to publish a huge census of the legal profession. It found that only 46 per cent of those surveyed believed higher...
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The litigation power brands: why UK firms can breathe easy for the moment
This week is the first publication of The Lawyer Court Rankings, a mammoth piece of research in which we examined 5,000 cases in English courts over a two-year period. We tracked not only the parties,...
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Comment: Forget the money, the UK-US battle is now about culture
Forget the money: culture is the new battleground for US and UK firms in London. Catrin GriffithsWe need to think of US firms in London a bit differently. Coverage is too often refracted through a...
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The secret club that will rule the legal world is nothing but myth
The social function of myth is to bolster a value system in which a person or organisation has a meaningful place. Unsurprisingly, the legal sector has plenty of these myths, but rather than taking...
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Stop knocking Ashurst. Going global made sense – and it’s changed the mid-tier
What became of the silver circle? It shrunk. Back in 2005 we created the term silver circle as a shorthand for firms that were UK domestic-focused with a strong UK client base, often private equity,...
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Success in the PRC market needs more than a speed-read of Sun Tzu
Failure is fashionable. Last month Amazon’s innovation head was jut the latest to gather headlines when he declared that the willingness to fail was a necessary part of success. The start-up mentality...
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Bird & Bird’s succession taboo rings alarm bells
Politics is the juice of law firms. Publicly, lawyers will disdain discussions of partnership hierarchies and the individuals within them; privately, they relish them. And why not? Firm politics, the...
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Transatlantic tie-ups have slowed local growth for UK legacy firms
US-UK mergers can be divided into two waves: pre- and post-Hogan Lovells. Since 2010 transatlantic tie-ups have been characterised in terms of equals, starting with the merger of Lovells and Hogan...
View ArticleA cultural battle that Cadwalader must win
Following a train of defections and sliding profits the embattled Cadwalader leadership thrashed out on a recovery strategy. Get back to basics; focus on key product lines; close Asia. The post A...
View ArticleKWM: too Slytherin for its own good
Last year I spent a lot of time talking to managing and senior partners about culture and how to define it; not culture change, but culture itself. The conversations were fascinating, but inconclusive....
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The mid-tier is right to fear PwC
You can’t fault PwC’s chutzpah. Last week it announced that it was taking on half of GE’s worldwide tax team in a managed services deal that was described by Harvard Law’s David Wilkins as another...
View ArticleEuropean 100 2017: Firms still need the Euro vision
Loath as one is to shoehorn last June’s referendum vote into everything, the prospect of a hard Brexit is suddenly concentrating the minds of UK law firms. The post European 100 2017: Firms still need...
View ArticleWhat 30 years of The Lawyer tells us: feminist pressure worked
We can broadly divide the past 30 years of the UK legal sector into three phases: innocence and enthusiasm; expansion and over-reach; and chastened realism. The post What 30 years of The Lawyer tells...
View ArticleFreshfields lockstep reform: Now it can finally hire the finance lawyers it...
If Freshfields doesn't pick off other magic circle lawyers, lockstep reform will be a waste The post Freshfields lockstep reform: Now it can finally hire the finance lawyers it needs appeared first on...
View ArticleNew dawn, new challenges for the Clifford Chance disputes team
The Clifford Chance litigation team has finally got something it can talk about that isn’t Excalibur. The post New dawn, new challenges for the Clifford Chance disputes team appeared first on The...
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Comment: Flexible working isn’t just for women – inclusion in law firms is...
Gender, gender, gender: how firms retain female talent is a board-level discussion point. The born-again evangelism among managing partners isn’t feigned, I grant you, but it’s pretty one-note, as if...
View ArticleIt’s not about the kit. In tech and innovation, firms need to learn to speak...
There will soon be a transfer market for law's tech celebrities, and the internal opportunities are attractive. The post It’s not about the kit. In tech and innovation, firms need to learn to speak...
View ArticleStep forward, litigators: you’re in the driving seat in the global elite
Litigation, the engine of the stratospheric domestic profits for US firms, is, ironically, the calling card for the UK’s elite law firms if they are ever to crack America, writes The Lawyer’s editor...
View ArticleCity 50: Forget Project Fear, the UK legal pie keeps getting bigger
There are 21 US-headquartered firms in the City 50, our first-ever ranking of law firms by London revenue. That fact alone has caused some jitters among certain sections of the UK market. It shouldn’t....
View ArticleAccess to justice: A little more talk, please, from the City. Your silence is...
Fair dealings under the rule of law, from which the commercial legal sector has derived immense riches, is under threat. The post Access to justice: A little more talk, please, from the City. Your...
View ArticleWant some easy pickings in UK law? Insurance firms are juicy targets
Spare a thought for EC3. Clyde & Co and Kennedys may have expanded overseas, but you can’t buccaneer your way to domestic growth. One of the biggest questions facing insurance firms is how they can...
View ArticleAt least the competition lawyers have found a Brexit dividend
Given that we are apparently obliged to contemplate Brexit until the great trumpet sounds, let’s consider some of the consequences of the referendum that we’re seeing winding through the courts. There...
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