As I reach my middle years I find much to admire and celebrate about the legal profession, and lawyers in general. This column is not going to be about any of that stuff. Instead, we turn to a facet of the typical lawyer’s character that does them no credit: the obsession with joining a crowd, …
Continue reading “Join our club – law firms’ obsession with the in crowd is beyond parody”
This month’s cover feature on Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) looks in hindsight like an informal trilogy on storied London firms agreeing high-stakes mergers, following earlier pieces on Hogan Lovells and Ashurst. Taken together, patterns and contrasts emerge. The legacy Herbert Smith, Lovells and Ashurst were all wrestling with similar cultural and strategic issues ahead of …
Continue reading “The cost of culture – HSF finds mega-mergers always come at a price”
An unprecedented wave of global enforcement has pushed risks facing banks to once unthinkable proportions. In the follow-up to our banking litigation Insight with Stephenson Harwood, bank counsel discuss managing the biggest risks in global business. Alex Novarese reports. ‘A head of litigation at a bank was saying to me the other day: “I don’t really …
Strong leadership is fundamental to driving innovation in law firms. This is not a discussion point. There is no discussion. This issue, Legal Business teamed up with Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) for an extended look at the role of leadership in a period of uncertainty and the strength of that core conclusion surprised even me.
It’s that time of the week again, dear readers, where we help you look back at the interesting legal happenings since Monday and pick out some of the highlights of this month’s edition of Legal Business. You can click here for further information on gaining full access to Legal Business.
During its 125th anniversary year, Slaughter and May still divides the industry like no other institution. For its admirers, it is the standard bearer, bucking the received wisdom of the modern legal market – for detractors, an outfit on borrowed time, hoping to bet against the market (with an unhedged bet at that).
As the end of the working week beckons, it’s time once more for our weekly recap of the notable legal events that occurred since the heady days of Monday with our Friday Edit column.
What does it mean to be an in-house counsel these days? The profession is agreed that the job carries considerably better status and prospects and attracts a better calibre of lawyer than 10 years ago. There is, in addition, widespread consensus that general counsel now operate much more closely to the business, moving beyond their …
Continue reading “Comment: What does it mean to be a modern GC? Discuss. Or rather don’t”
Strong leadership is fundamental to driving innovation in law firms. This is not a discussion point. There is no discussion. This issue, Legal Business teamed up with Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) for an extended look at the role of leadership in a period of uncertainty and the strength of that core conclusion surprised even me. …
Continue reading “Leadership in law: improving, crucial and maybe in the nick of time”
The launch of Legal Business’s debut Disputes Yearbook is just one of many signs of how dramatically the dynamics of the global law game have changed over the last decade. While our lead article, Martial Law, assesses whether the dramatic rise of the contentious lawyer has reached a post-Lehman plateau, there is no sign of …
