The agony of choice

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 MARKET VIEW – LITIGATION 

Bär & Karrer partners Daniel Hochstrasser and Nadja Jaisli Kull discuss the dos and don’ts to be considered when appointing arbitrators

For all of its emphasis on privacy, procedural flexibility and the reassurance that comes with a widely-adopted enforcement regime in the form of the New York Convention, parties remain attracted to international arbitration for a sometimes-overlooked, but equally important, factor: the ability to select their own decision-makers. In some ways, however, being spoilt for choice can make picking one’s candidate that much more difficult. Do you go for the expensive ‘name’ arbitrator? The Big Law associate tipped for great things but with comparatively few appointments to their name? Or, for counsel and arbitrators of a certain generation, the most unthinkable move of all – a woman?

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Comment: Converging on boom-time profits without a boom – the big four now and then

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They say averages lie, though in my experience not as much as people, but producing an annual report with 2,000 data points as we do with this month’s LB100 means it can be hard even for professional anoraks such as myself to find the nuggets of meaning in the thickets of information.

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Dissent: Platitudes and a missed debate – how GCs are pushed off their ethical course

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It’s stated so often but never questioned: everywhere you turn, in-house lawyers pay tribute to the holy grail of ‘being commercial’. But, as I will argue, such an approach raises substantive and troubling questions regarding the influence on the ethical compass that is supposed to be an in-house lawyer’s most important tool.

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Comment: Women in law – A belated bandwagon, but still welcome

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Rarely, even in the conservative game of law, has so necessary a measure been so long avoided until the status quo became so laughably, farcically untenable. The move is for major law firms to start articulating public benchmarks for their proportion of female partners – corporate speak for the series of concrete targets announced this year to stem the huge outflow of talented women from the profession.

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Guest post: The Children Act – a look at Ian McEwan’s take on law and the justice system

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Fiona Maye is sixty – and a judge in the Family Division of the High Court. Her husband’s about to leave her for a younger woman, she fears, as a case comes before her that will test both her values, and her judgement. A seventeen year old is refusing desperately needed treatment that would save his life, because his religion – his parents have brought him up to be a Jehovah’s Witness – doesn’t allow blood transfusions. The hospital wants her to order the treatment be carried out in spite of his, and his parents’, opposition. What follows will test both the law and the judge herself.

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Comment: LB100 – Statistically speaking, you may not need a bigger boat

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Last year, delivering our annual results issue, Legal Business remarked that the age of turbulence facing law firms since the 2008 banking crisis was far from over. And so it has proved. Despite all the talk of returning confidence, and clear evidence of recovery in the UK economy, it’s still choppy out there. Stripping out another year of consolidation, the numbers are a little better than 2013 but that’s about it.

Continue reading “Comment: LB100 – Statistically speaking, you may not need a bigger boat”

Converging on boom-time profits without a boom – the big four now and then

Posted on |

They say averages lie, though in my experience not as much as people, but producing an annual report with 2,000 data points as we do with this month’s LB100 means it can be hard even for professional anoraks such as myself to find the nuggets of meaning in the thickets of information.

Well, when in doubt I start with the market leaders, so I dug up the numbers on London’s big four in their peak of 2008 to compare against this year’s results to see how they have changed. Continue reading “Converging on boom-time profits without a boom – the big four now and then”

Women in law – A belated bandwagon, but still welcome

Posted on |

Rarely, even in the conservative game of law, has so necessary a measure been so long avoided until the status quo became laughably, farcically, untenable. The move is for major law firms to start articulating public benchmarks for their proportion of female partners – corporate speak for the series of concrete targets announced this year to stem the huge outflow of talented women from the profession.

For years the profession had claimed that meritocracy and changing attitudes would feed through into higher than the circa-20% female partnerships currently at most firms; over the last five years it has become apparent how baseless that conventional wisdom was as gender diversity has barely budged. Indeed, there is some evidence that the two primary tools by which law firms increasingly manage their partnerships – lateral hiring and partner exits – are both favouring male lawyers over women and offsetting any number of women’s networks and mentoring schemes.

Continue reading “Women in law – A belated bandwagon, but still welcome”

LB100 2014: Statistically speaking, you may not need a bigger boat

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Last year delivering our annual results issue Legal Business remarked that the age of turbulence facing law firms since the 2008 banking crisis was far from over. And so it has proved. Despite all the talk of returning confidence, and clear evidence of recovery in the UK economy, it’s still choppy out there. Stripping out another year of consolidation, the numbers are a little better than 2013 but that’s about it. Mergers have driven the market to nearly £21bn in revenues but average partner profit of £640,000 across the top 100 is still a way off the all-time peak of £703,000 recorded in 2008. The world’s second largest legal market is tracking inflation.

Continue reading “LB100 2014: Statistically speaking, you may not need a bigger boat”