Mishcon de Reya has hit its target of £100m in revenues by 2016, with 2013/14 turnover up 18% to £104.6m and profit per equity partner (PEP) up by 16% to £975,000, constituting 107% growth since 2009.
The results come as Pinsent Masons enjoyed an uptick in its financials for a second successive year, with revenue up 4.6% to £323.3m, while profit per lawyer increased by 11% from £40,000 to £44,500. PEP increased 4.7% from £387,000 to £405,000.
Magic Circle firm posts 16% PEP hike against 7% revenue increase
Clifford Chance has emerged as the strongest-performing Magic Circle firm financially for 2013/14, as the UK elite all unveiled unaudited sterling figures to coincide with the launch of the Global 100 this month.
The 3,000-lawyer firm has revealed a 7% rise in revenues to £1.36bn, up from £1.27bn in 2013. Profit per equity partner (PEP) has increased significantly to push average partner drawings back to over £1m after a blip last year, up a trend-busting 16% to £1.14m from £983,000.
Continue reading “Clifford Chance eclipses UK elite as Global 100 unveiled”
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP)’s spin-off lawyer contracting service Lawyers on Demand (LoD) is set to launch its first hub outside of London in Manchester, after BLP in March announced it would open an office in the UK’s second largest legal market.
LoD, which was launched by BLP in 2007 but hived off into a separate company in 2012, is recruiting local legal staff ahead of the Manchester launch in the autumn of 2014. LoD will initially launch the service as a pilot, offering organisations across the North West access to local, qualified freelance lawyers on ‘secondment style’ arrangements.
Continue reading “Lawyers On Demand looks beyond City with regional launch”
The Law Society paid out approaching £1m in recruitment fees over ten months in 2013, as Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) took the lion’s share of disclosed legal fees for that period, standing at almost £450,000, the body’s latest accounts reveal.
Recruiter Michael Page took home £919,919 in the ten months to October 2013, a 41% uptick on fees paid in the whole of 2012, when the figure was £654,555.
The fees are listed in the Law Society Group (LSG)’s latest financial accounts published in early June, with the 2013 financial period shortened to October in order to align it with the payment of practising certificate fees.
Continue reading “Law Society pays £1m recruitment bill as Norton Rose receives £435k”
RPC is in talks with a potential breakaway group of Edwards Wildman Palmer City partners – made up of corporate partners Niall McAlister, Eero Rautalahti, Stuart Blythe, and insurance and reinsurance partner David Kendall – alongside California-headquartered Cooley and top-60 Global 100 US firm Foley & Lardner.
The formerly five-strong splinter group is down to four after Shawn Atkinson, who served as co-chair of Edwards Wildman’s venture capital group, resigned in June to go to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
Sarah Downey assesses the post-merger state of NRF’s dispute resolution practice
With Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF)’s eye-catching union now over a year old, the top ten UK firm has achieved the enviable feat of creating, through a succession of global bolt-ons, a 3,800-lawyer firm with $1.9bn in revenue, almost without fallout.
Its 138-fee-earner (excluding trainees) City dispute resolution practice is something of an exception, having lost a handful of its star players, including Dorian Drew, adviser to ex-Barclays’ chief executive Bob Diamond on the Libor scandal, who last year left for Clifford Chance.
Bird & Bird has signed strategic co-operation agreements with two Indonesian law firms, intellectual property specialists K&K Advocates and business law firm Nurjadin Sumono Mulyadi & Partners (NSMP).
The agreements, which were signed on 24 June in Jakarta, come as the top-20 firm, which already has a presence in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore, experiences a period of rapid growth in the Asia-Pacific region stemming back 18 months.
Continue reading “Bird & Bird secures dual Indonesia tie-up in continued Asia push”
Taylor Wessing on 23 June announced the opening of two representative offices in the US to facilitate access to its European network. Located in tech-focused Palo Alto and New York, both offices are set to open in September this year.
The top 20 firm will not be practising US law, but instead plans to use its new US bases to push out work to its international network across Europe, CEE and Asia.
Continue reading “Taylor Wessing launches US rep offices in Palo Alto and New York”
With private practice diversity statistics still often trailing their clients, last month saw rhetoric translated into targets at Ashurst and Linklaters, as they became the latest City law firms to commit to a female partnership ratio.
Linklaters is the third Magic Circle firm, after Allen & Overy (A&O) and Clifford Chance, to set itself targets, declaring that 30% of all partner promotions will be women by 2018, while its female management roles will double within the same time frame.
Continue reading “City firms support diversity targets by committing to female partnership ratio”
The merger between Blake Lapthorn and Morgan Cole went live on 1 July to create Blake Morgan. The firm’s managing partner, Walter Cha, talks competition and strategy.
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How did the merger come about and what are the reasons behind it?
We both acted for common clients and a lot of people were known to each other. We have a partnership at Blake Lapthorn and Morgan Cole that are ambitious and want to see themselves grow rather than wait for other things to impact on them.
