Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group has appointed associate general counsel Sara Yu to head its group legal function, taking over the helm from former Freshfields partner Timothy Steinert. Steinert, who has been Alibaba’s group general counsel for 13 years, will remain with the group and serve as company secretary. He will also take on a senior […]
CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang has unsuccessfully defended a Russian businessman in a dispute over outstanding debt related to a diamond business. Dmitry Tsvetkov and Rustem Magdeev bought and sold diamonds owned by Graff Diamonds, selling these in concessions stores in Dubai and Cyprus. Tsvetkov, instructing PCB Litigation, was an associate of the Graff family […]
Eversheds Sutherland has announced its biggest ever promotions round, with 38 partners making the grade. The cohort is the firm’s largest so far and comes four years after its transatlantic merger in 2016 with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. The promotions apply to lawyers across Europe and the international network (bar the US), with the UK […]
East Anglian firm Birketts is to take its first steps into the London market via a merger with an insurance boutique. EC3 Legal has been in business for eight years and is led by David Coupe, a former partner at both Clyde & Co and Ince & Co. It has around 18 lawyers, including five […]
Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group has appointed associate general counsel Sara Yu to head its group legal function, taking over the helm from former Freshfields partner Timothy Steinert. Steinert, who has been Alibaba’s group general counsel for 13 years, will remain with the group and serve as company secretary. He will also take on a senior […]
CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang has unsuccessfully defended a Russian businessman in a dispute over outstanding debt related to a diamond business. Dmitry Tsvetkov and Rustem Magdeev bought and sold diamonds owned by Graff Diamonds, selling these in concessions stores in Dubai and Cyprus. Tsvetkov, instructing PCB Litigation, was an associate of the Graff family […]
Eversheds Sutherland has announced its biggest ever promotions round, with 38 partners making the grade. The cohort is the firm’s largest so far and comes four years after its transatlantic merger in 2016 with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. The promotions apply to lawyers across Europe and the international network (bar the US), with the UK […]
East Anglian firm Birketts is to take its first steps into the London market via a merger with an insurance boutique. EC3 Legal has been in business for eight years and is led by David Coupe, a former partner at both Clyde & Co and Ince & Co. It has around 18 lawyers, including five […]
The largest 200 UK law firms are revealed in The Lawyer’s UK 200 latest report.
There’s no doubt that firms are using non-UK growth to power their global figures. Of the 35 Top 50 firms for which The Lawyer has historical global revenue data, all but four saw higher growth outside the UK in the five years since 2019. Included in this group is Herbert Smith Freehillls (HSF), where London remains […]
Which law firms are private equity houses looking to invest in? The answer, if the conversations we’re having with managing partners are anything to go by, is ‘pretty much all of them’. Most regional firms of note have had speculative approaches at some time in the last five years or so, as private equity gradually […]
Barclays’ legal team was once among the most influential in the UK. That power has diminished over the last decade, yet the banking giant still packs a punch when it comes to talent management. Some 40 lawyers are understood to have left Barclays in the UK last year. There are cost-cutting measures at play here, […]
Keystone Law, the poster child for the platform firm, is likely to break the psychologically important £100m revenue barrier in 2025. The success of this firm has spawned a new market, which is challenging traditional firms on the talent front. More than 3,500 lawyers now work across a variety of fee-sharing outfits, research from Atlas […]
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Gowling WLG and Norton Rose Fulbright’s London offices will all be under water in a few decades. This trio shares idyllic views overlooking the Thames, but they will all be submerged in the river by the year 2100 as climate change-induced sea level rises occur. And this is based on the […]
Frustrated Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) candidates are calling on the SRA to increase accessibility to the appeals process after a results error saw 175 candidates mistakenly told they had failed their exams. On Monday last week, the SRA announced that 175 candidates who sat SQE1 in January and were told they had failed on 14 […]
The administrators of collapsed firm Axiom Ince have filed a creditors’ bankruptcy petition against its former boss. Filed at the end of last week, the petition will seek to force Pragnesh Modhwadia’s bankruptcy, The Lawyer understands, applying to the court for his assets to be taken and sold to pay debts to the administrators. Pinsent Masons […]
Partnership promotions are continuing apace, with three City firms announcing a fresh new set of partners for 2024. Addleshaw Goddard has bumped up 26 lawyers this promotions round, which is the largest number of lawyers to make partner in one go in the firm’s history. The international firm’s partner count now stands at 429. Nine […]
Cooley is set to defend social networking and dating app Grindr in a High Court class action launched by Austen Hays, a new collective actions firm owned by Gateley. The claim alleges that Grindr is in breach of UK data protection laws for sharing sensitive data with third parties for commercial purposes without their users’ […]
Norway’s Sands has suffered one of the largest mass defections in its history after six partners left to join Big Five firm Wiersholm in Trondheim. The hires bolster Wiersholm in a range of the firm’s key sectors, including marine law, renewables, technology, real estate and tax. The firm has committed to further growth over the […]
