BLP sees three partners depart; London hires hit double figures for September
The lateral hire market in the City picked up sharply in September, with the number of notable hires announced in the first few weeks of the month comfortably into double figures.
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) saw a gloomy summer draw to a close with the departure of three significant names: head of managed legal services Patrick Somers to DLA Piper; contentious tax partner Liesl Fichardt to Clifford Chance; and commercial technology specialist Adam Rose to Mishcon de Reya.
Clifford Chance’s hire of Fichardt was the most eye-catching. Acknowledged in The Legal 500 as a ‘masterful team head’, she also practised as a tax barrister for 13 years before joining Dorsey & Whitney in 2006 followed by BLP in 2008.
While some legal recruitment specialists attribute the uptick in lateral hires simply to a ‘back to school’ attitude in the market, others identify the trend as a product of the steady revitalisation of the legal market more generally, with appointments taking some time to come to fruition.
‘Things are landing now that have been going on in the past year,’ says Dominique Graham, director at Graham Gill. ‘Business levels started picking up late last autumn, especially with corporate and finance activity and it takes some time for us to see these things percolate through.’
‘The low point is probably behind us and firms are making decisions to grow the business for the future.’
Simon Beswick, Osborne Clarke
Nick Holt, partner at SR Search, agrees: ‘Clients are making hires with greater due diligence than before, and are taking their time to be really thorough with checks, going further than just interviewing and looking at where potential recruits have worked, in order to increase their chances for a successful hire.’
Cautious optimism is the message coming through. ‘The low point is probably behind us and firms are making decisions to grow the business for the future,’ says Simon Beswick, managing partner of Osborne Clarke, which lost employment partner Richard Brown in September to Nabarro. ‘But I suspect that firms will still remain cautious and will wait for a longer period of positive economic indicators before attacking the market with real gusto.’
David Pester, managing partner at TLT, which recently hired two partners from DLA Piper as part of its launch into Manchester, identifies two factors at play. ‘Firstly, in the UK domestic market, there are undoubtedly strategies at work in firms which are looking to increase market share. One way of achieving is by deepening expertise or by adding new people with additional clients.
‘Secondly, some firms and individuals are looking at each other’s relative plans. If a firm has a particular strategy and an individual in that firm isn’t quite sure their business or their client type aligns with that, then they are likely to be looking for firms that are more closely aligned with what their clients focus on,’ he says.
Graham identifies the US firms in London, particularly those with under 30 partners (such as King & Spalding and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), as particularly active. ‘US firms are building up and out, they still have a need for the basic building blocks in the UK and are in the process of shaping and changing their strategy. Some of them are starting afresh, some of them are revisiting their strategy, which creates churn in itself,’ says Graham.
NOTABLE LATERAL HIRES IN SEPTEMBER |
|||
| Name | Practice area | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Rose | Commercial and technology | Berwin Leighton Paisner | Mishcon de Reya |
| Liesl Fichardt | Tax | Berwin Leighton Paisner | Clifford Chance |
| Paul Stothard | International arbitration | Dentons | SJ Berwin |
| James Reed | Corporate | Baker & McKenzie | DAC Beachcroft |
| Angela Hayes | Financial services regulation | Mayer Brown | King & Spalding |
| Brian Conway | Banking and finance | Latham & Watkins | Jones Day |
| Paul Harris | Intellectual property | Gowlings | Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman |
| Babette Märzheuser-Wood | Technology, media and telecoms | Field Fisher Waterhouse | Dentons |
| Jonathan Solomon | Energy and natural resources | Dentons | Reed Smith |
| Richard Brown | Employment | Osborne Clarke | Nabarro |
| Manoj Vaghela | Insurance | Clyde & Co | Pinsent Masons |
| Georgie Collins | Intellectual property | Brown Rudnick | Irwin Mitchell |
| Patrick Somers | Corporate | Berwin Leighton Paisner | DLA Piper |