How music giant Universal and its external legal adviser maintain a harmonious and enduring working relationship The music industry is in crisis. Physical sales of music have decreased dramatically in the past decade. Although digital sales and legitimate streaming via services such as Spotify have increased, they have not filled the gap. Instead, that gap […]
Our focus this week is on a relationship: we profile the general counsel of Universal Music Richard Constant with his favoured external lawyer, Stephen Kon of KWMSJB, a year after the titanic merger with EMI was given the nod. What emerges most strongly from the double interview (Cover story, page 10) is that the […]
Ruling on whistle-blowers’ rights and member status has LLPs in a spin Employment lawyers branded it a “significant” decision, one that could potentially force the 64,000 LLPs in the UK to look again at their membership agreements and consider how members be classified under modern employment law. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that LLP […]
Top-dollar lawyer Stephen Lucas will have to bring home the bacon for Kirkland Is any lawyer worth busting your firm’s compensation structure for? Perhaps one at the pinnacle of their niche in the market. This is the quandary that faced Weil Gotshal & Manges back in 2011 when it hired Linklaters partner Stephen Lucas to […]
My determination to do battle with all attempts to devalue the art of lawyering was forged under the influence of some inspiring thinkers on English law When The Lawyer invited me to be a guest columnist I paused before responding. Don’t the Brits have stricter libel laws than we do in the US, I thought? […]
Move of the week Payne Hicks Beach has hired former Manches partner Rebecca Cockcroft. She joins the family department as a partner. Cockroft’s practice focuses on all areas of family law including divorce, matrimonial finance, children, cohabitation, pre-nuptial agreements and Hague Convention cases. Her areas of specialism include complex financial cases,particularly with an international dimension, […]
As international firms question their future in these small, closely linked markets, local lawyers too are eyeing the business environment with caution In the past few years foreign direct investment (FDI) into the Czech Republic has been up and down, to say the least. An all-time high of €9.4bn (£7.7bn) – much of it from […]
Last year’s horsemeat furore left supermarket chain Iceland feeling the heat. So it called on legal chief Jayne Burrell for some cool-headed thinking Supermarket chain Iceland has had a difficult media image over recent years. Any business having to live down an advertising campaign fronted by the car-crash celebrity that is Kerry Katona doesn’t need […]
The boss of US retailer Target has stepped down after a data breach affected millions of customers. Could law firms be next in the firing line? Cyber security is about stopping people from breaking into things. Like a virtual world of cops and robbers, the aim of the game is to convince the curious burglar […]