In this month’s Signal International report, we are revisiting the Netherlands. While the 2022 report looked at the international firms and their offices in the Netherlands, this time round, however, we take a closer look at the six Benelux firms featured in The Lawyer’s Euro 100 with an office in Amsterdam and stack them against the international firms.
The report contains a breakdown of their dispute resolutions teams in the Netherlands – a practice area generating interest from partners in the City and across the continent.
For this report, firms were ranked based on the number of lawyers and partners in their litigation and disputes resolution team in the Netherlands. To provide a more complete representation of which firms place the greatest impetus on their disputes capabilities, the report also provides an overview of the disputes team at the group of firms as a proportion of their overall headcount in the Netherlands.
Data shows that the litigation practices at the major Dutch and Benelux firms are larger in relation to both metrics. Disputes has considerable heft for one firm in particular with litigation partners accounting for almost a third of their entire partnership.
In contrast, the international firms not only have a low disputes partnership headcount in Amsterdam, but they are also staffed lightly in overall disputes lawyer headcount terms too. What is telling is that none of the 20 international firms has a disputes lawyer headcounts higher than the Benelux firm with the lowest number of disputes lawyers in Amsterdam.
The fact that international players have much smaller disputes teams in Amsterdam compared to the domestic players suggests there may be little appetite to do so. The commitment to litigation in the Netherlands by some of the domestic firms mean that they may be better positioned to either partner with major international law firms bringing claims on behalf of their clients in the Netherlands, or leading cases themselves.
To find out which firms made the top of the list on these metrics, read the full report now.
