The Lawyer Awards 2018: the litigation team of the year finalists
Which teams are battling it out for the coveted litigation prize at this year’s The Lawyer Awards?
GDPR: The challenges facing the tech market
The GDPR has created an avalanche of work for lawyers, and some big headaches for clients
Because they’re worth it: DWF’s valuation and the Knowles effect
Who better to deliver DWF’s IPO narrative than a man once dubbed the Tigger of law firm management?
Macfarlanes office move: 35 years in the making
With the lease on Norwich Street running out, about five years ago Macfarlanes began the process of looking for new options.
Forget the crowdsourcing gimmicks, conversations are a smarter way to tweak law firm culture
Reverse mentoring is taking hold at Linklaters and A&O, and it’s being championed by the firms’ most senior partners.
BLM’s tech revolution: Why we restructured the firm
BLM is striving to become more efficient by investing in technology and pushing through some difficult internal restructures
Travers Smith’s Dunkirk spirit during an 18-month office overhaul
Travers Smith has not moved offices. It has not abandoned its treasured room-sharing system for open plan. But someone walking into 10 Snow Hill, where Travers has been based since 1990, would be forgiven for thinking they had lost their way. The firm has recently completed a total refurbishment of its offices, all while keeping […]
Business services case study: How Ince went agile
Changing the policies at a traditional firm brought quick dividends.
Six things to consider if you want to float your law firm
Nothing comes for free – before going for the IPO firms need to understand six key points.
Freshfields lockstep: the war for talent gets teeth
This is the first fissure revealing the implications for those of us who are not superstars; we’re not worth as much as we thought we were.
KPI: Make kindness a performance indicator
Should kindness be a significant measure of success for all leaders and all teams? asks LBC’s Paul Gilbert
2018 financials: Why the Clifford Chance Carillion deal is more important than Freshfields losing Higgins
Across the board, we’re hearing of splendid figures all round, with the mid-tier proving its worth once again.
Slaughters can’t grow all its own talent anymore – no wonder it has to bring in laterals
Warning: we must now confront the unthinkable. Slaughter and May lateral hires will start to be seen as the norm.
What we can expect from the SFO’s next director
As the non-announcement leaked out, there was much scratching of collective heads and asking, who is she? Because she isn’t One Of Us.
US lateral hires: Asda shows a payoff for Gibson Dunn’s competition push
A US firm displacing the mighty competition department at Slaughter and May, no less, has not gone unremarked by City partners.
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.
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A&O veteran Philip Wood: What I learned from 50 years in law
Allen & Overy’s (A&O) former banking head Philip Wood QC is retiring at the end of this month after half a century in the magic circle firm.
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 distillation of the personal and organisational, both illuminates and shapes strategy. It’s worth, then, paying attention to the terms people use when describing their firm’s […]
A&O and O’Melveny: At last some realism about global mergers
Oh, this is cute. A&O’s overture to O’Melveny & Myers yet again underlines the magic circle firm’s reputation for lateral thinking. For the last five years A&O has been consistently rumoured to be on the verge of doing a deal with Shearman & Sterling. Bypassing New York in favour of a West Coast play – […]
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Gender pay gap reporting: a Wombat?
As the deadline for gender pay gap reporting draws to a close, the question is whether it will help the legal profession to progress towards achieving widely-shared objectives or whether it is just another regulatory burden with which solicitors must cope.
Global growth obsession: Six firms that are setting the trend
In 2016 Global 200 billings totalled $128.4bn – a 3 per cent increase on 2015’s $124.4bn. A large part of that growth is thanks to six ambitious firms.
Herbert Smith Freehills tops mammoth settlements in 2017
If settlements are conducted behind closed doors then they seldom achieve the attention and excitement of the cases that make it to trial, for the fact there is no binary winner or loser. That may have to change, because so far, three of The Lawyer’s Top 20 cases for this year have settled.
The sad story of Cobbetts
As it emerges that eight former Cobbetts lawyers have been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, we recall the story of an ambitious firm caught out by the recession.
Clifford Chance lances the boil with lockstep review
Clifford Chance partners have voted to extend the firm’s lockstep ladder once again this week. But who is going to benefit from this change?
LIA SocGen settlement: This saga is nowhere near over
As far as litigation is concerned, settlements are supposed to be the gentle way out. But in the case between the Libyan Investment Authority and Societe Generale, it has come to signify the end of one headache and the beginning of another.
How partner exits sparked Ashurst’s strategy u-turn
Last year Ashurst’s mounting partner exits signalled serious trouble within its ranks. But as firms prepare to release their year-end financials, the consensus is that the storm at Ashurst has calmed. Will it last?
Canada: new occupational health and safety act expands scope of employer duties
On June 1, 2018, amendments to Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act came into force, significantly expanding the nature of the health and safety obligations owed by employers and businesses in Alberta. This article focuses on one of the areas in which changes have been made: the expansion of the types of entities that have […]
Use of injunction in modern trespass cases
By Leanne Norton and Lucy Shepherd In two recent cases of trespass, injunctions have been the preferred remedy rather than possession. An injunction is a court order that requires a party to do a specific act, or to refrain from doing a specific act. Injunctions are a discretionary remedy and an interim injunction might be […]
Adjudication watch June 2018: what you need to know
In this latest ‘Adjudication Watch’ our construction team provides updates on significant adjudication decisions: Mailbox (Birmingham) Ltd v Galliford Try Building Ltd (formerly known as Galliford Try Construction Ltd) [2017] Christopher Linnett Ltd and Mr Christopher Linnett v Matthew J Harding [2017] Baldwin and another v J R Pickstock Ltd [2017] Victory House General Partner […]
Messi scores important victory in longrunning EU trademark dispute
The General Court of the European Union ruled that the Barcelona and Argentina football star Lionel Andrés Messi, can register his European Union trade mark (EUTM) application for ‘MESSI’ in classes 3, 9, 14, 16, 25 and 28 (covering a wide range of products including fragrances, jewellery, clothing and sports equipment) notwithstanding an opposition led […]
Scottish Law Commission consults on lease termination law
Walker Morris partner Rob Aberdein provides a summary of proposed reforms to Scottish commercial lease regulation following a discussion paper published by the Scottish Law Commission (SLC)…
Louboutin sees red – in a good way
By Gary Assim The European Court of Justice (ECJ) gave its judgment on the question of whether the Louboutin trademark for its red sole could be invalidated because it consisted exclusively of the shape of the sole and was not a colour mark. The ECJ, in a rare move, ruled against the previous Opinion of […]
Advancements in jurisprudence in Guernsey trust law
With a number of significant recent court decisions, the past year has significantly advanced jurisprudence in Guernsey trust law…
Video: Country risk analysis for investment decisions and corporate strategy, part 2
Paul Murphy, managing director of Gowling WLG’s Energy Group, sat down withErnst & Young associate partner Michael Samis and Canada Control Risks principal John Seddon for a discussion on country risk analysis. Watch the video by clicking below
Interrogatories – questions and answers time
Both legal practitioners and the general public alike are very much aware that litigation can be a time consuming and costly exercise, particularly in light of the lengthy delays for the hearing of trials and the subsequent length of time many trials run for. One particular tool favoured by the courts as a way to […]
No novation is not ideal
In M Hart Construction Ltd & Anor v Ideal Response Group Ltd [2018] the court refused to enforce two adjudicators’ decisions on the basis that there was no contract between the parties. There had not been an effective novation from an original contracting party. The adjudicators therefore did not have jurisdiction to determine the disputes. Another […]
Trade associations call for company voluntary arrangement reforms
Reforms are needed to the current company voluntary arrangement (CVA) process, according to both R3 and the British Property Federation (BPF). R3 (the trade association for the UK’s insolvency, restructuring, advisory, and turnaround professionals) has published a research report recommending a number of reforms to improve the effectiveness and reputation of CVAs. These include: Capping […]
How the courts are interpreting long-term maintenance contracts
By Ian Yule The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) may be past its peak, but various cases have come to court in the past few years involving long-term maintenance contracts, including PFIs. Three cases in particular are worth noting. They have featured issues such as whether terms should be implied about co-operation, how good faith clauses […]