I was an incredibly good girl and my mother was incredibly opinionated: I basically did whatever she told me to do! For years I wanted to be a doctor but then I realised I absolutely hated chemistry and you couldn’t be one without chemistry. So I had a crisis after my O-Levels where I thought …
As he does every year, Stewarts’ head of commercial litigation, Clive Zietman, prepares to address an assembly of disputes partners. It is a customary annual strategy meeting, where the firm attempts to make sense of the market. But he encounters a familiar problem. ‘I’ve become notorious for saying “I don’t have a crystal ball” when …
I’ve always wanted to be a barrister, since before I can remember. There was no particular event or anything, I just always knew. I must have seen something on TV or the news perhaps. It was easy for me, because once you know what you want to do, it’s easy to follow that path. I’ve …
Continue reading “Disputes perspectives: Gaby Dosanjh-Pahil”
The health of the English and Welsh court system has long been a cause for genuine concern. Over the last decade, there have been anxieties over the diminishing desirability of a judicial role, not least due to a chronic lack of governmental funding that has resulted in salaries comparatively paltry to private practice positions. This …
I’m the youngest of three children. My brother and sister both read law at university, and have become lawyers themselves. My sister is a general counsel, and my brother is a silk. They’re both older than me, and when it came to applying to university, there wasn’t much choice on my part! I benefited a …
I’d like to say becoming a lawyer was a very well-thought-out decision in my teenage years, but it wasn’t. I recall taking a career aptitude test at school, and it was one of the few professions I’d actually heard of. Law sounded interesting, and I’ve always enjoyed the legal wrangling in various TV shows. Showing …
I have always very much enjoyed talking to the City’s disputes practitioners, and after two years away from covering my beat, I was curious to know what had changed. The answer: everything and nothing. True, face-to-face meetings and the whistle-stop tours of London’s leading disputes practices have been replaced by Zoom and Teams. It seems …
Continue reading “UK’s robust disputes framework holds firm amid the crisis”
Keystone Law has significantly outstripped its half-year results unveiled in September, by posting a healthy 11% increase in turnover for the full year to 31 January 2021. Revenues were up to £55m from last year’s £49.6m, with the rate of increase nearly double the 6.5% announced in the half-year results.
Gibson Dunn has significantly strengthened its Hong Kong bench after hiring a four-lawyer regulatory team from Herbert Smith Freehills. Arriving with three associates, partner William Hallatt brings a broad Asia Pacific practice focused on contentious and advisory regulatory advice for major global financial institutions. Gibson Dunn chair and managing partner Ken Doran described Hallatt as ‘a …
Lindsay Beardsell is never one to rest on her laurels. She trained and qualified at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer but, as is the case for so many established general counsel (GCs), private practice failed to satisfy the need to be closer to a business. She recalls: ‘My parents had their own businesses and that always interested …
Continue reading “The Client Profile: Lindsay Beardsell, Tate & Lyle”
