Life During Law: Stephen Wilkinson, Herbert Smith Freehills

Posted on |

My summer holidays were spent licking envelopes at my parents printing factory in Hemel Hempstead. My parents were an odd mix, my mum an Italian immigrant and my father as English as they come. They were very keen that I have a profession as they wanted something better for their kids. The business is still in the family.

I learnt classical guitar as a kid. Every time I got to the next grade, a bit like a dog getting a treat, I got a guitar. I had a room full of guitars in my late teens. My Fender Stratocaster is one of my most prized possessions. They end up getting used more by my daughter now.

I was crazy about basketball as a kid and toured with the England youth teams. Nowadays I wouldn’t get anywhere near a team – I’d need to be twice as big.

Continue reading “Life During Law: Stephen Wilkinson, Herbert Smith Freehills”

Eversheds inches closer to US tie-up as Foley & Lardner emerges as front runner

Posted on |

Eversheds is moving closer to its much sought-after US merger, with Foley & Lardner identified as the primary candidate for a deal.

After a vote last June in which the Eversheds partnership heavily backed a US tie-up the firm’s executive, which includes chair Paul Smith and chief executive Bryan Hughes, have narrowed discussions down to two law firms. Milwaukee-based Global 100 firm Foley & Lardner, with revenues this financial  year of $665m, has emerged as a leading candidate.

Continue reading “Eversheds inches closer to US tie-up as Foley & Lardner emerges as front runner”

More than half of GCs expect AI to reshape their teams within five years

Posted on |

In-house lawyers have been notoriously slow to embrace the tech-backed delivery of legal services, but our survey of more than 600 global legal spend decision makers shows many believe technology will transform the way they work.

More than half of those surveyed expect automated legal services to have a significant impact on the way corporate legal functions serve business within the next three years.

Continue reading “More than half of GCs expect AI to reshape their teams within five years”

Sharing the pie: DLA Piper launches meritocratic remuneration review

Posted on |

Sector activity to become core part of pay assessment

While other major firms break their locksteps to bring in high-profile recruits, DLA Piper is going the opposite way, launching a review of its remuneration structure to encourage greater cross-selling throughout the firm.

The review is being led by co-chief executive Simon Levine, who pledged to review the firm’s remuneration system as part of his successful bid to take over from Sir Nigel Knowles last year.

Continue reading “Sharing the pie: DLA Piper launches meritocratic remuneration review”

BT kicks off strategy review to overhaul internal function

Posted on |

BT’s in-house legal team has begun a wide-reaching strategic review on how to change its internal structure to bring its lawyers closer to the business, while the telco also prepares for its next panel review.

Chris Fowler, general counsel (GC) for UK commercial legal services, said the review will see the team ‘centrally manage the legal resource (such as litigation and certain commercial functions) but keep senior lawyers as close as possible to individual business units to act as a business partner and meet their specific business needs’.

Continue reading “BT kicks off strategy review to overhaul internal function”

‘Absolutely outrageous’ – Gove floats £60m-plus tax on City law firms to fund criminal courts

Posted on |

New justice secretary Michael Gove is set for a tussle with City lawyers after floating a plan to impose a multimillion-pound tax on commercial law firms to pay for the abolition of a controversial criminal court charge on guilty defendants.

Gove’s plan has been proposed as a means to replace the revenues generated by the court charge that was supposed to bring in between £65m and £90m annually. A report in The Times in October said that a 1% levy has been floated as a means of appeasing the Treasury. Such a levy on the top 100 UK firms, which have combined revenues of £20.64bn, would potentially generate more than £200m annually but promises to ignite controversy over arbitrary taxation of one industry.

Continue reading “‘Absolutely outrageous’ – Gove floats £60m-plus tax on City law firms to fund criminal courts”

Shearman abandons defined-benefit scheme to defuse pensions time bomb

Posted on |

While some US law firms have long ignored mounting pension liabilities, relying on annual profits to pay retirees, Shearman & Sterling has become the latest firm to alter its pensions system to limit future payouts.

Shearman’s 200-strong partnership has voted to remove defined-benefit pensions for future partners, a plan that typically hands retirees an annual payment based on a percentage of their final ‘salary’.

The change was introduced in the middle of October and affects any new partner, whether a promotion or a lateral hire.

Continue reading “Shearman abandons defined-benefit scheme to defuse pensions time bomb”

Linklaters ranked best adviser for second year in annual survey

Posted on |

Sarah Downey reports on the clients’ verdict

Linklaters has again been awarded top marks as an external adviser in Legal Business‘ fourth annual in-house survey, emerging as the clear overall favourite for both quality of advice on high-profile, strategic matters, as well as ranking first overall for value for money.

Continue reading “Linklaters ranked best adviser for second year in annual survey”

News in brief – November 2015

Posted on |

SLAUGHTER AND MAY WIPES £600M OFF BA SUIT

Litigators at Slaughter and May have successfully struck out around £600m from a claim against client British Airways. The airline is one of several airlines facing a cartel damages action from flower importer Emerald Supplies and 564 other shippers. In October the Court of Appeal disagreed with Justice Peter Smith’s decision to adjourn a strike-out application against the economic tort claims and reduced the £1bn claim to £400m.


Continue reading “News in brief – November 2015”

‘Like Scotland leaving the UK’: Bank ring-fencing reforms herald big changes

Posted on |

Further proposals for banking reform issued last month by the Bank of England are expected to cause significant internal restructuring of in-house legal teams, with some banks effectively having two separate legal functions.

Under the reforms, banks with core deposits greater than £25bn, including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander UK and The Co-operative Bank, will from 2019 need to separate their retail banking function from the rest of their group, which will divide the activities in the legal team. Banks are currently in a transitional phase of determining where the line is drawn between retail banking and investment banking operations.

Continue reading “‘Like Scotland leaving the UK’: Bank ring-fencing reforms herald big changes”