Capital ideas – the law firm model is as stable as you make it

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It’s a sobering sign of what we’ve been reduced to when we’re praising firms for doing the obvious. This time it’s the pioneering technique of holding a little cash back to cover investment, working capital and future partner drawings, rather than doling it all out to equity partners almost as soon as it comes through the door.

Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) and Dentons are the latest proponents of the dark art of prudence – FFW confirming it would hold back its ‘special’ profit distribution in March, while Dentons has delayed some payments over the last 18 months from the 2011/12 financial year.

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Disputes revival has huge implications for City law

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A few years ago – during what in retrospect turned out to be a boom – you knew where you stood with City law. The market kept growing and, while the man in the street associated lawyers with courts and disputes, those in the industry knew success came from the other side of the equation. In short, you made the real money from deal-doing and associated disciplines, not the contentious side of practice.

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Converging in on an end game for Global London

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Remember convergence? In the 1990s’ tech boom the concept was all the rage. It was the simple idea that rapidly-advancing communications would see once-discrete platforms and information systems like TV, the printed word and telephones merge and dynamically share data in an economically seismic fashion.

What happened next says a lot about human nature, business and the whimsy of prediction. The internet bubble burst and such utopian visions were suddenly crazy. One received wisdom replaced another. Except convergence was one of the most accurate forecasts ever made about industry – it just took technology another three years to catch up with the hype. The fundamentals prevailed.

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Cobbetts gets burned but that’s business

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There’s nothing like a bit of schadenfreude when matters go awry and the collapse of Cobbetts as an independent entity has proved no exception. Since it was confirmed that the firm was to become the first major UK practice to fail since the 2010 break-up of its local rival Halliwells, plenty have claimed the end was inevitable and a direct result of over-reach.

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Love the legacy but it’s time for renewal

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Tony Angel and the cute teddy bear next to him greeted me as I found my new desk – a Legal Business cover from 2003 and a personal favourite, a brilliant dissection of Linklaters’ painful reinvention as metric-driven world-beater. I soon dug out other classics, including the 2009 Icarus-themed investigation into pre-collapse Halliwells and the crumpled Hammonds cigarette packet illustrating a 2005 piece on the national player’s strained finances.

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Rising clout means a new kind of corporate politics for GCs

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Oxymoronic as it sounds, news that Barclays general counsel (GC) Mark Harding is to depart has been received as startling and yet not entirely a surprise. Barclays had been engulfed in a series of escalating controversies in recent years spanning mis-selling, tax advice, and – most damagingly – allegations of rigging institutional interest rates. While there has been no suggestion that Harding or Barclays’ legal team shoulders any blame, incoming chief executive Antony Jenkins has gone out of his way to signal a total break with the culture under predecessor Bob Diamond, who last year stood down as the Libor investigation generated a record fine against the bank.

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