Eigen’s first GC on leaving the Slaughters partnership and creating value from tech
Adam Eastell left his partnership at Slaughter and May for Eigen, and has since broadened his range of skills. With his legal team growing, the future looks bright
In-house interview: GC Nick Pritchett on making the legal function vital at Ikea
After only 10 months at Ikea, Nick Pritchett was appointed its GC. He has since worked hard to integrate the legal team as a vital function at the retail giant.
Argent’s David Marriott on its mammoth King’s Cross project
Over 10 years ago, ex-Hogan Lovells lawyer David Marriott went on secondment at developer Argent. He’s still there, working on one of its largest projects.
“I’ve never had a panel – I prefer choice” – Airbnb’s Fiona Dormandy
Airbnb faces a plethora of regulatory challenges, and EMEA GC Fiona Dormandy insists getting the best advice comes from having freedom of law firm choice
Life of luxury: onefinestay’s GC on the challenges of the niche rental sector
While Airbnb may be the most familiar name of the shared economy, there are dozens of challengers in online accommodation. Enter onefinestay.
Luton Airport GC: “Going outside my original remit got me promoted to the board”
5 million more passengers, a £225m construction project and a new driverless train system was too good a challenge for Swati Paul to turn down
Three firms make the grade in Network Rail’s slimmed-down panel
Network Rail has more than halved its panel in the past six years, with the latest review seeing three firms wins spots until 2024. The spots have been taken by Dentons, Addleshaw Goddard and Eversheds Sutherland and will be in place until 2024. The contract is worth £70m. Stuart Kelly, group general counsel at Network […]
WeWork to carry out inaugural panel review in Europe
WeWork is to launch its first formal panel review across Europe this year, after the arrival of its new general counsel Sarah Nelson Smith at the end of 2018. The workspace giant hired Nelson Smith from KFC over the summer, who is gearing up to review the company’s current legal arrangements in the first half […]
Twelve firms on the radar in National Grid panel review
National Grid has launched its first panel review in four years with the energy provider seeking an “unparalleled” service from its prospective legal advisers. Any firms wishing to pitch for the work has until late March. Firms will be expected to cover at least 12 listed practices. The business last renewed its panel firms in […]
Brewin Dolphin’s legal head: The GC’s challenge is “doing more for less”
Brewin Dolphin’s head of legal Alissa Foale talks to The Lawyer about her function’s biggest challenges and how she thinks financial services will transform in the coming years.
NHS drops 11 firms from streamlined commercial panel
NHS Commercial Solutions has rolled out a new legal panel, with firms including Addleshaw Goddard, Clyde & Co and DAC Beachcroft winning places. The three firms have been reappointed to the procurement organisation’s framework, as well as Mills & Reeve and Trowers & Hamlins. A total of 19 firms have made it on to the new roster; new additions are Browne Jacobson, Sintons, […]
Dyson to increase number of Asian firms on panel as it cuts overall legal advisers by 60%
Following Dyson’s announcement to move its headquarters to Singapore, the technology group’s general counsel will relocate to the South East Asia hub and is currently conducting a panel review. Dyson’s group general counsel Martin Bowen is set to relocate to Singapore in July, as the company moves its headquarters from Malmesbury in Wiltshire to Asia. […]
RBS prepares for “disruptive” shake-up in next panel review
Having reappointed its panel firms for an extended period at the end of last year, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is looking to add more “disruptive” elements to its next review of legal advisers. It is understood that the bank’s latest panel, which was concluded in December, will last until 2020 at which point […]
A&O and Addleshaws take new spots on local government panel
Allen & Overy and Addleshaw Goddard have been added to the expanded National Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) Frameworks’ latest panel. LGPS, the nationwide pension scheme for people working in local government, completed its refreshed and restructured panel in January, with the addition of two new lots. The latest panel has 12 firms, which have won places […]
Monzo wraps up panel review as three firms win places
Digital bank Monzo has finished reviewing its roster of legal advisers, appointing three firms to its panel. The firms which made it onto the roster include longtime advisers Hogan Lovells, Taylor Wessing and Simmons & Simmons. While Hogan Lovells partner Jonathan Chertkow mainly advises the challenger bank on regulatory and compliance issues, Taylor Wessing partner Adrian […]
Slaughters and HSF dropped from eight-firm FSCS panel
Slaughter and May and Herbert Smith Freehills have been replaced by Clifford Chance and Addleshaw Goddard on The Financial Services Compensation Scheme’s (FSCS) revamped £12.6m panel. The FSCS, the UK’s statutory compensation scheme for customers of authorised financial services firms, has appointed eight firms for a four-year term on its latest legal panel, which is divided into three […]
Aviva gears up for first panel review in six years
FTSE 100 insurance giant Aviva is preparing to review its legal roster, six years after last undertaking a comprehensive analysis of its panel arrangements. The company, which will launch the review in the first quarter of this year, decided a traditional review was not necessary in 2016 and instead ran a ‘desktop review’ of its roster, […]
Seven firms win places on Heathrow’s legal panel
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Eversheds Sutherland are among the firms to have won places on Heathrow Airport’s slimmed-down roster. The company’s general counsel Carol Hui, who featured in The Lawyer Hot 100 in 2014, has appointed seven firms to the panel. The last review saw the appointment of 11 firms, with Blake Morgan, Brodies, DLA Piper and […]
GC2B: Creating the perfect business karma for success
How can you reshape an in-house team in the image you want it to be? This was just one of the issues up for debate at The Lawyer’s latest roundtable with BCLP.
GC2B: From fintechs to banks, tech gives in-house teams the chance to reinvent themselves
At a dinner in the shadow of London’s Tower Bridge, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) hosted a group of legal heads to discuss the topic of reinventing themselves and their teams in a technology-driven world. Responses were varied and the attendees came from enormously diverse business models, though the prevailing mood was one of necessary and […]
GC2B: Managing external and internal legal teams in a global world
At The Lawyer‘s recent General Counsel Strategy Summit, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BLCP) hosted a round table on the topic ‘managing external and internal legal teams in a global world’, talking about the shaping of legal resources to business objectives, structures and diversity. BCLP partners Jonathan Morris & Rémy Blain led nine senior in-house lawyers […]
Lawyers shouldn’t play safe, they should take the lead
What does the term “progressive” mean to in-house lawyers? GCs explain how they build their in-house legal teams.
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Business ethics and the modern GC: How to navigate public scrutiny
Should in-house lawyers do the legal thing or the ethical thing? – there can be a subtle difference
Balfour Beatty: How to persuade 28,000 employees to do the right thing
In 2016, Balfour Beatty’s legal department embarked on one of the largest compliance programmes of its kind. How did the team embed the company’s values and processes into such a large workforce?
How Baker McKenzie built a dawn raid app
Bakers claims its app is unique in the legal market and the effort goes on to add bespoke functions for clients
Case study: how Slaughter and May improved its transactional efficiency
Slaughter and May’s solution to the challenge of increasingly complex cases involving millions of documents and seemingly endless email trails: Tiki-Toki
TLT’s legal tech kit that can advise not just triage
An innovative solution from TLT and US tech group LegalSifter can slash lawyers’ BAU admin burden, but it can also do so much more
Squire Patton Boggs’ “Apple-style” tool for employment advice
The firm is rising to the challenge of providing accurate employment law information about the world’s hardest-to-reach jurisdictions
How AI saved the day on the SFO’s Rolls-Royce probe
The Serious Fraud Office has expanded its use of AI software to speed up investigation time and bring down costs, but its use is not without its challenges
The Bermuda Private Trust Company Guide
Private trust companies (‘PTCs’) may be described as companies established to act as trustees for one or more trusts that are related in some way e.g. made in connection with the same family group, philanthropic or charitable organisations, business or investment funds. Bermuda has a stellar international reputation and is a popular jurisdiction in which […]
Where will it end? A different perspective
The reach of the Supreme Court’s decision in the goods and services discrimination complaint of Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd [2018] IRLR 1116 is starting to reveal itself. In the recent EAT decision in Gan Menachem Hendon Ltd v Groen UKEAT/0059/18/OO the Tribunal’s finding of direct discrimination on grounds of religion or belief was overturned on the basis […]
How can AI automation transform legal departments?
Neota launched their first in a series of roundtable events in New York this week. The event was designed for in house legal departments to discuss how they can leverage AI automation to transform their legal department and overcome the challenge of achieving ‘more with less’. We were joined by professionals from KPMG, JP Morgan, […]
2019 Gender Pay Gap Reporting
By David Smedley, Andrew Raymen The 4 April 2019 deadline for private sector employers with more than 250 staff to publish their second round of gender pay gap reports (based on a ‘snapshot date’ of 5 April 2018) is fast approaching. What trends and observations can be drawn from the 2018 reports and how can […]
Avoiding GDPR fatigue | GDPR periscope series
By Emma Erskine-Fox The date is 25 May 2018. Everyone’s talking about the GDPR. Colleagues across the business are engaged, even excited, about data protection. Regular questions about how the GDPR affects their day-to-day jobs are pouring in. Fast forward to today’s date. You may well be finding that ‘GDPR fatigue’ is starting to set […]
Tupe case law update
By Louise Clifford, Siobhan Bishop How significant have been the developments in TUPE case law over the past 12 months? There have been a number of TUPE cases during 2018 but it has not been a year of ground breaking change. Much of the case law has been reiterating some well-established principles. However, the fact that there […]
Determination of “Loss” following an “Automatic Early Termination Event” under the ISDA Master Agreement (1992 Multicurrency-Cross-border form)
In Lehman Brothers Finance AG v Klaus Tschira Stiftung GmbH [2019] EWHC 379 (Ch), Snowden J was asked to resolve a series of questions concerning the determination of “Loss” following an “Automatic Early Termination Event” under the ISDA Master Agreement (1992 Multicurrency-Cross-border form). The main issues related to the date by reference to which the determination of […]
Commercial Court clarifies law on audit negligence
Mr Justice Bryan in the Commercial Court has today handed down a wide-ranging judgment in AssetCo plc v Grant Thornton UK LLP [2019] EWHC 150 (Comm). Following a 12 day hearing in June and July 2018, the judgment runs to some 1274 paragraphs. The claim arose out of the admitted negligence of Grant Thornton in […]
Court of Appeal addresses the application of SAAMCO in the context of audit negligence
The Court of Appeal has today unanimously dismissed an appeal by Manchester Building Society against a judgment of Teare J holding that the Society’s former auditor, Grant Thornton, was not liable for mark-to-market losses incurred by the Society in relation to various long-term swaps. The proceedings arose out of hedge accounting advice provided to the […]
North Sea Oil JOA Appeal Dismissed
The Court of Appeal has today unanimously dismissed an appeal by two participants in a North Sea oil joint venture, Centrica and TAQA, against a judgment of Robin Knowles J holding them liable to pay their share of pension scheme deficits incurred by the operator in relation to the joint operations. The proceedings arise out […]
High Court discharges freezing orders for breach of the duty of full and frank disclosure and considers jurisdictional issues
In PJSC Commercial Bank Privatbank v Kolomoisky & others [2018] EWHC 3308 (Ch), a decision handed down on 4 December 2018, Fancourt J discharged worldwide freezing orders up to US$2.6 billion obtained against the Defendants, declined jurisdiction over foreign Defendants, and stayed the proceedings against English Defendants. The judgment is as an important reminder of the duty […]
Market snapshot: Employment
By Alexandra Rimbu In the context of the ever-changing labor market general framework, in 2018 Romania took decisive steps to align its legislation with the country’s economic landscape. In the process, the Romanian legislator adopted two laws: one regarding internship and one regarding telework.
A common and costly mistake – wage and benefit over payment
By Louise Kitchen Mistakes happen. Despite rigorous payroll and HR processes and procedures sometimes the paperwork is delayed, goes astray, or a keying error occurs. If an individual is still employed repayment can be relatively straight forward. But what if they are not? The law Over payments often happen as a result of: An administrative […]
Croatia enacts whistleblower protection act
By Marko Kapetanović Croatian employers have until the end of this year to partially comply with the recently enacted Act on the Protection of Whistleblowers (Zakon o zaštiti prijavitelja nepravilnosti; “Whistleblower Protection Act“), with which they must come into full compliance by March 2020. The Whistleblower Protection Act defines who will be deemed a whistleblower and enjoy […]
Get your landlord on board before you diversify: advice for Guernsey retailers
By Piers Dereham I run a retail business but trade has not been good recently. Can I let someone run a small coffee bar in the shop to try to attract more customers? Your landlords might be concerned that you are changing the use of the property. In general, the landlords will be more relaxed if […]
Tupe case law update
By Louise Clifford, Siobhan Bishop How significant have been the developments in TUPE case law over the past 12 months? There have been a number of TUPE cases during 2018 but it has not been a year of ground breaking change. Much of the case law has been reiterating some well-established principles. However, the fact that there […]
Employment essentials – February 2019
By Connie Cliff, Jane Fielding, Siobhan Bishop Employment, labour & equalities experts bring you the latest top five employment law developments that may affect your business. Direct Discrimination: comparators and ‘material difference’ TUPE: Dismissal ostensibly for dysfunctional working relationship was TUPE-related Trade union statutory recognition: admissibility assessed at date of CAC decision Whistleblowing: complaint about false rumours […]