Do you know your cash-burn phase from your TLDNR? Welcome to the buccaneering, hierarchy-lite world of the fast-growth, tech-driven ‘disruptors’, the kind of business that a growing number of lawyers aspire to work in or advise. Following the launch earlier this year of the 2017 GC Powerlist, which focused on early-stage companies and rising stars …
Continue reading “GC 2.0 – The GC Powerlist Summer Reception”
Alex Novarese, Legal Business: Looking at the top of the market, how is buying behaviour changing? Donny Ching, Royal Dutch Shell: I see increasing sophistication in sourcing legal services. I am sure you all have experienced tenders and reverse tenders. More corporates are looking at using different tools, also driven by the contracting and procurement …
The headline of the last lengthy piece Legal Business carried on Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer said it all: The Last Champions. While there is no doubt that the Magic Circle has faced huge challenges asserting itself since the banking crisis, for many Freshfields was the member of the club with the best prospect of securing its …
Continue reading “Comment: What ails Freshfields? Time is running out for ‘The Last Champions’”
In the wake of the banking crisis, some commentators claimed the legal industry was set for a bloodbath that would sweep away 10,000 solicitors’ jobs from a flabby trade. As so often, the profession defied the critics, handling its post-Lehman reboot with assurance. Now, after posting on the face of it impressive numbers for 2016/17 …
Continue reading “Bangs and whimpers – LB100 performance is a lot weaker than it looks”
In the wake of the banking crisis, some commentators claimed the legal industry was set for a bloodbath that would sweep away 10,000 solicitors’ jobs from a flabby trade. As so often, the profession defied the critics, handling its post-Lehman reboot with assurance. Now, after posting on the face of it impressive numbers for 2016/17 …
Continue reading “Bangs and whimpers – LB100 performance is a lot weaker than it looks”
The headline of the last lengthy piece Legal Business carried on Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer said it all: The Last Champions. While there is no doubt that the Magic Circle has faced huge challenges asserting itself since the banking crisis, for many Freshfields was the member of the club with the best prospect of securing its …
Continue reading “What ails Freshfields? Time is running out for ‘The Last Champions’”
Associate pay used to be simple. Lockstepped and transparent to the nth degree on both sides of the Atlantic, you knew exactly where you stood and exactly when the legal market was overheating. There were obvious downsides to such transparency. Back in the late 1990s/2000s boom, a salary war triggered by Palo Alto law firms …
Continue reading “Associate pay smoke screen: it’s fooling no-one”
Oh for the days when politics was the last thing on the minds of City advisers. For years, British politics was an ignored backdrop for a legal profession used to a globalist, free-market agenda since the 1980s. How quaint such times seem in a national economy and City now overshadowed by Brexit and a convulsing …
The Supreme Court has gained its first female head with Lady Hale today (21 July) confirmed as its new president alongside three new appointments to the UK’s top court. The appointment, replacing the outgoing Lord Neuberger, will be welcomed by diversity campaigners and the profession’s liberal wing with the outspoken Hale often regarded as the court’s most …
To recap as the UK tiptoes towards banana republic territory in the wake of last month’s inconclusive, prediction-defying general election: City professionals face the prospect of an unsteady government negotiating a logistically-epic exit from the EU with an uncertain agenda against a much larger and better prepared counter-party. That is until the next general election …
Continue reading “Comment: Magic Circle playbooks in Europe are full of contradictions’”
