Business leadership

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Pinsents tasks 11 teams with genAI testing

Pinsent Masons is appointing AI champions within every office, creating 11 different “communities” of employees participating in data product testing.  The firm wants to make support around AI-related initiatives locally accessible by establishing advanced delivery teams for each practice group, as well as function-focused communities to test the capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot. The 11 […]

chatbot genAI

“Prepare for the new world:” Simmons debuts genAI tool

Simmons & Simmons has developed its own generative AI (genAI) tool, with its workforce encouraged to train up and think about how new technologies can help in their daily life. The firm has called its genAI tool “Percy” – named after one of the twin brothers who co-founded Simmons in 1896. While Percy is powered […]

speed read clock

Roundtable: Where will generative AI be in three years?

What will The Lawyer’s AI headlines read in three years? This question was posed to managing partners at the Lexis Nexis roundtable, hosted in conjunction with The Lawyer, last month. Since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, discourse surrounding generative AI has accelerated at a staggering rate. There is a spectrum of views across the […]

Microsoft Copilot

Law firm leaders prepare for bumper Microsoft bills

As Microsoft releases its latest artificial intelligence (AI) tool today, law firms are considering whether they should invest in the capability and add to their already eyewatering bills from the technology giant. From today (1 November 2023), law firms and other businesses of a certain size can choose to sign up to Microsoft Copilot – […]

Allen & Overy

A&O spins off risk management business with Inflexion deal

Private equity house Inflexion is making a strategic investment into Allen & Overy’s legal risk management division, aosphere. After the deal, aosphere will become a stand-alone entity. A&O will retain a minority stake in the business, while Inflexion will invest alongside US-based Endicott Capital. It emerged in September that financial services firm Lazard had been […]

Analysis

How not to lose your associates

The exits we saw last year may have slowed a little since the most recent salary war cooled down, but the wider trend is one that dates back years: workers are less loyal than they used to be. Law firms are finding it increasingly difficult to retain their associates at a time when employers offer […]

WhatsApp-ing clients: fair or foul?

Do you WhatsApp your clients? It’s a more divisive question than you might expect. According to a recent poll of conducted by The Lawyer on LinkedIn, while 66 per cent of fee-earners don’t use the messaging service for this purpose, 34 per cent do. And it’s not split along seniority lines: partners, associates, trainees and […]

How to seduce a law firm

Merger negotiations between two firms of different sizes can be a tricky process. Here, a number of mid-tier managing partners give their view on how to win the hearts of potential smaller matches when on the acquisition trail.

Opinion

Why law firm leaders should speak out on politics

The world has changed significantly; Brexit, the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis have challenged businesses leaders and the people they employ in ways we’ve not experienced since the Second World War; which means for most of us this context is entirely new. Given the scale of the challenges we’re facing whether around society, the economy or […]

Law firm floats – waving or drowning?

Since the flotation of Gateley in May 2015, a range of law firms have floated on the stock market or considered doing so. The largest of these was Mishcon de Reya, which abandoned its proposed main listing float in June 2022 “for the foreseeable future due to market conditions”. The entry into administration of Ince […]

Can tech companies work even better together?

Thomson Reuters’ chief product officer for legal tech Kriti Sharma talks to The Lawyer about holding technology and tech companies more accountable for user needs, what can be done to reduce tech waste and getting tech companies to work better together.

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Infertility, pregnancy loss and lawyering: all in a day’s work?

“Your HCG levels aren’t rising”. A phrase reserved for parents whose unborn baby is (literally, if you repeat home pregnancy tests) fading before their eyes. Words spoken to me in February 2018 while sat in my open-plan office. An hour later, I walked into a presentation. Broken, helpless, confused, shaky and sad, I couldn’t articulate […]

Business Leadership briefings

Protecting reputation in the spotlight of an investigation

Global business is increasingly familiar with the prospect of short-notice public investigatory attention, whether from regulators, law enforcement, political forces or as a consequence of sanctions, and this can – in in some cases – devastate individual and corporate reputation.

Protecting reputation in the spotlight of an investigation

Despite the fact that the threat of an investigation alone can be enough to paralyse a business, early warning signs are often missed and businesses can mistake an investigation risk for a reputation risk. Those who handle serious issues well are able to triage the issue at an early stage and identify its potential impact, […]

Networking: don’t forget to follow up!

When networking, it’s easy to focus on the event itself and forget that one of the most important parts of the process is the follow-up. Networking, and relationship building, aren’t a one and done – they’re a process. And that process takes careful tending.

Breaking the Bias: part 2

In celebration of International Women’s Day and this year’s theme of #BreakTheBias, our national GROW network for female-identifying professionals is putting the spotlight on some of Gowling’s key clients through a powerful month-long video series.

Achieving gender balance – women on boards

The FTSE Women Leaders Review 2022 saw the United Kingdom rank in second place internationally for its representation of women on FTSE 350 boards and their leadership teams. The FTSE 100 saw a rise in the representation of women by 2.1% from the beginning of 2021, to 39.1% and an increase was also achieved in the FTSE 250, with the proportion of women in the boardroom now at 36.8%.

Employment “by reason of”, “for” and “in” the metaverse

The employment contract can be linked to the creation and development of the Metaverse, it can involve providing services from the real world, but in the Metaverse, and even in the most sophisticated form it can be performed entirely, even from its creation, in the Metaverse.

Leadership lessons: Navigating a crisis

Recently, I saw a quote that said that adulthood is not one crisis after another, it’s multiple crises, simultaneously, forever. Is anyone else feeling that way lately?

Efficient data privacy compliance using ediscovery workflows

Data privacy is rapidly transforming personal information management policy and practices. Technology-assisted programs to comply with and contain the costs of Data Subject Access Rights (DSARs) in the European Union and Subject Rights Requests (SRRs) in the United States is top of mind for affected organizations.