International Arbitration Insight: Bigger, longer, more complicated

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International Arbitration Insight: Bigger, longer, more complicated

‘Arbitration has gone from being the exotic bird of dispute resolution to become almost the norm,’ argues Constantine Partasides of Three Crowns (3C).

The appearance of boutiques such as 3C and Hanotiau & van den Berg is itself a sign of arbitration’s entry into the mainstream. It is tempting to consider parallels with the US-based litigation firms that emerged in the late 1980s and ’90s, when Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Boies Schiller Flexner broke away from the full-service model to focus on disputes work. Continue reading “International Arbitration Insight: Bigger, longer, more complicated”

The edge of the cliff – Brexit response for worried GCs

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The edge of the cliff – Brexit response for worried GCs

For UK business, 2018 will be dominated by one question: when do we push the button on Brexit? Months of scenario planning have given a sense of the possible outcomes, but there is little confidence that a decision will be taken in full possession of the facts.

‘We are 500 or so days on from the referendum, and it is still not clear what the arrangements between the UK and the EU will be,’ notes Kirsty Cooper, group general counsel (GC) and company secretary at Aviva. ‘As GCs we are being asked to give our best guess, but the scale of the conjecture with Brexit is unusual.’ Continue reading “The edge of the cliff – Brexit response for worried GCs”

Dollars and sense – charting the GC response as sustainability hits the boardroom

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Dollars and sense – charting the GC response as sustainability hits the boardroom

A tougher risk environment is taking sustainability from PC fad to board-level concern… and onto the agendas of GCs. We teamed up with Linklaters to chart the client response in a world of ‘not quite legal’ risks

In his 1962 work Capitalism and Freedom, the economist Milton Friedman complained that ‘the view has been gaining widespread acceptance that corporate officials and labour leaders have a “social responsibility” that goes beyond serving the interest of their stockholders.’ This ‘fundamental misconception’ about how markets work, argued Friedman, ought to be replaced by the consensus that the only social responsibility of business was to increase profits ‘so long as it stays within the rules of the game’.

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Leadership and the modern GC: a special report

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We teamed up with Reed Smith to ask which skills the GCs of tomorrow will need to lead and what the future holds for in-house leadership training.

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Soft law, hard sanctions – Human rights laws and the next risk front facing business

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With human rights issues entering the mainstream of business practice, we teamed up with Herbert Smith Freehills to assess how new standards are changing the way in-house counsel operate

It turns out that the next risk front facing business and promising to reshape the role of general counsel (GCs) is a piece of legislation notorious among lawyers for having no teeth and little direct liability for companies.

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The risk debate: The gate keepers’ burden

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Our annual Legal Business/Marsh round table saw law firm risk managers debate their role in fighting on two fronts – against demanding clients and internally with their fee-earners

Our 2016 risk management report, published last month, looked at a number of live issues for risk management teams within the UK leading firms, most of which place those teams at the frontline of potential battles.

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Up in the air – As Brexit looms, GCs face leap into the unknown

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Business is struggling to find a response as the Brexit vote looms. We team up with Herbert Smith Freehills to explore the impact… and GCs’ options.

‘One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”’
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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The end of the tunnel – litigation and regulatory challenges in financial services

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Legal Business teamed up with Simmons & Simmons to discover how financial institutions are coping with the twin threats of regulation and litigation, and assess whether the end is in sight.

If there was ever any doubt about what might be in store for the Volkswagen Group following its recent emissions scandal, a glance at the banking industry over the last five years offers a sobering clue.

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Commercial Dispute Resolution Survey

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As Legal Business publishes its second annual Disputes Yearbook, Cornerstone Research scopes the views of in-house counsel and private practitioners to shine a light on trends within the international disputes market

At Legal Business’s first International Arbitration Summit held in London this September, esteemed practitioner Sir Frank Berman KCMG QC spoke about investor-state arbitration increasingly moving into public consciousness.

Continue reading “Commercial Dispute Resolution Survey”