It is often rightly noted that law is a conservative old game, as can be gleaned from the identikit strategies of City law firms. Invest in transactional work and international offices, manage your partnership proactively, half-heartedly corporatise the business and hire a load of non-lawyer professionals with dubious mandates. Continue reading “Comment: What does Mishcon know that your managing partner doesn’t?”
Comment: Buck-passing and buyers’ remorse as KWM saga nears end
Though it will be outdated by the time this issue hits desks, I am professionally obligated I suppose to return to the subject of King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) as the firm’s troubled European business reaches what must be the decisive chapter of its post-merger tale. Continue reading “Comment: Buck-passing and buyers’ remorse as KWM saga nears end”
What does Mishcon know that your managing partner doesn’t?
It is often rightly noted that law is a conservative old game, as can be gleaned from the identikit strategies of City law firms. Invest in transactional work and international offices, manage your partnership proactively, half-heartedly corporatise the business and hire a load of non-lawyer professionals with dubious mandates. Makes sense right? Except when everyone else does it. Turns out there is a little thing called supply and demand and if you are chasing clients in the same place as everyone else, it is harder to make a buck.
And as the entertaining, buccaneering, bling-styled ascent of Mishcon de Reya illustrates, going your own way can be obscenely good business and fun to boot. Mishcon wanted to change in the 1990s but still decided to stick to what it was good at. Luckily what Mishcon was good at proved to be a licence to print money as disputes, private client and real estate boomed even as larger City law firms looked elsewhere. As ever the most important thing in business and life is being lucky but you don’t move Harvard Business School case studies saying that.
Continue reading “What does Mishcon know that your managing partner doesn’t?”
Guest post: Why lawyers aren’t selling what clients are buying
Demand is flat or falling at large law firms, says the newest Wells Fargo survey released earlier this week. Revenue is now being driven solely by hourly rate increases, the last remaining income enhancement button that law firms can press and one they will presumably continue to press until it no longer responds. Continue reading “Guest post: Why lawyers aren’t selling what clients are buying”
Comment: The moment of truth arrives in the SJ Berwin saga
Even if you discount the more lurid claims made regarding King & Wood Mallesons, it is clear the firm is facing a huge challenge to get its Europe and Middle East business back on track. Continue reading “Comment: The moment of truth arrives in the SJ Berwin saga”
Comment: Winning hearts and minds (but mainly hearts) at Linklaters
The best Freshfields corporate lawyer Silk Street ever produced is now leading Linklaters, with incoming senior partner Charlie Jacobs ushering in a very different style at the City giant to the technocratic revolution pushed through by previous regimes.
Continue reading “Comment: Winning hearts and minds (but mainly hearts) at Linklaters”
Superstar clients and super-threats to global law
As Legal Business gathered a group of the legal elite at the top of Tower 42 to debate the issues facing the world’s top law firms – the question arose as to whether anything truly threatens law’s premier league.
Certainly the going has been more challenging since the banking crisis for all sections of the legal industry, whether you are betting on ‘flight-to-quality’ or ‘more-for-less’, but overall the Global 100 looks no nearer to an existential threat or much meaningful consolidation. AI? The accountants? New Law providers? The former reflects a genuine force set to substantially change the industry, though it is not apparent whether that will come at the expense of high-end law firms. The latter two players have yet to come near to living up to the fanfare made for them.
Continue reading “Superstar clients and super-threats to global law”
Winning hearts and minds (but mainly hearts) at Linklaters
The best Freshfields corporate lawyer Silk Street ever produced is now leading Linklaters, with incoming senior partner Charlie Jacobs ushering in a very different style at the City giant to the technocratic revolution pushed through by previous regimes.
The charismatic South African has long stood out, not only for a clubbable style more associated with Freshfields’ deal team but also for an entrepreneurial drive that looked increasingly exceptional amid Linklaters’ more seasoned M&A lawyers (the firm promises the next generation of M&A partners will rectify that).
Continue reading “Winning hearts and minds (but mainly hearts) at Linklaters”
Comment: Looking forward to Ashurst’s decline – The outlook worsens for a proud City institution
You cannot change the past. Move forward. Be constructive. Focus on making things better. Pick your cliché. And, like most clichés, they are built on the basis of common sense… and can still sometimes be beside the point.
Looking forward to Ashurst’s decline
You cannot change the past. Move forward. Be constructive. Focus on making things better. Pick your cliché. And, like most clichés, they are built on the basis of common sense… and can still sometimes be beside the point.
Take Ashurst, which, having delivered a very poor 2015/16 trading period, is arguing once again that things will come good tomorrow. What else can leadership say? With Ashurst having been probably the worst-performing major City player since the banking crisis, such appeals are the only option.