In 2010, Georgetown University, under the direction of Professor Milton Regan, held a conference of academics, practitioners and leading thinkers on the profession. To delegates, the atmosphere was heady; change was palpable in the room. Continue reading “Comment: A self-deceiving return to business as usual”
The Bar: 20 Essex Street announces new joint heads of chambers
Leading commercial litigation set 20 Essex Street has today (18 June) announced the appointment of Christopher Hancock QC and Duncan Matthews QC as joint heads of chambers from 1 August, where they will succeed outgoing longstanding chief Iain Milligan QC. Continue reading “The Bar: 20 Essex Street announces new joint heads of chambers”
DISSENT: A self-deceiving return to business as usual
RSG’s Reena SenGupta argues an improving economic climate is leading top law firms to wrongly assume the ‘new’ normal is the same as the old one
In 2010, Georgetown University, under the direction of Professor Milton Regan, held a conference of academics, practitioners and leading thinkers on the profession. To delegates, the atmosphere was heady; change was palpable in the room.
There were no dissenting voices. People knew that there was no turning back for the legal profession. Legal services would be unbundled, equity structures in law firms would change, clients would exert their buying power and demand radically different fee arrangements, Chinese law firms would stride onto the global stage and new technologies and service providers would fundamentally alter the law firm business model. It was going to be, as the title of the conference predicted, a brave new world.
Continue reading “DISSENT: A self-deceiving return to business as usual”
The last word – the state of law firm leadership
With a spate of executive elections taking place recently, we ask the c-suite at leading City firms how management has changed over the last five years
CONSENSUS APPROACH
‘The command and control structure doesn’t generally work in law firms. Nonetheless, the last five years have seen a greater acceptance from partners for the need to operate more tightly and collectively. Partnerships will always have mixed feelings about their leadership. Leading a law firm is about managing ambiguity, ambivalence and disparate viewpoints.
Continue reading “The last word – the state of law firm leadership”
HSF shakes off post-merger politics in favour of sole global corporate head as Ferraro takes over
Setting aside the notoriously difficult post-merger politics of selecting one partner to run a core practice area, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) in mid-April announced that joint global head of corporate Mike Ferraro will this month take over as sole head.
Fellow co-head Patrick Mitchell will, after four years as head of corporate, take up a new role as head of the firm’s infrastructure practice in both the UK and EMEA. Mitchell will work closely with Andrew Clark, head of projects for Australia and Asia, in the continued development of what the firm describes as ‘this strategically important practice’. Mitchell will also maintain his role in developing the firm’s presence in Germany.
Comment: ‘Geography seduced everyone’ – is emerging market bias blind-siding your firm?
There is a notion in business that is often useful, but rarely observed – the idea of signal and noise, or rather being able to distinguish between the two. The not-remotely-new point I’m making – well illustrated in Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s not-remotely-new book, Fooled by Randomness – is that in making informed decisions, leaders should endeavour to shut out the ‘noise’ of short-term, rapidly changing information, which is typically near worthless.
Comment: Democracy and half measures are not delivering for Addleshaws
I wrote recently of the need, when commenting on the firms and individual lawyers we cover, to give the benefit of the doubt, and I meant it, but sometimes it’s hard to find that silver lining or constructive slant. Addleshaw Goddard, unfortunately, has become a case in point. Continue reading “Comment: Democracy and half measures are not delivering for Addleshaws”
Virgin Media completes leadership reshuffle with new legal head as Weight Watchers unveils its new GC
Home entertainment company Virgin Media has completed an overhaul of its executive following its £15bn acquisition by Liberty Global in 2013, announcing Mine Hifzi as its general counsel (GC).
Hifzi was previously senior vice president of commercial and legal affairs for Scripps Networks Interactive, where she held a combined business development, commercial strategy and legal role. She also spent 14 years heading up the international legal and government affairs team at Discovery Communication, and prior to that worked in senior positions at Turner Broadcasting System Europe and United International Pictures.
‘Geography seduced everyone’ – is emerging market bias blind-siding your firm?
There is a notion in business that is often useful, but rarely observed – the idea of signal and noise, or rather being able to distinguish between the two. The not-remotely-new point I’m making – well illustrated in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s not-remotely-new book, Fooled by Randomness – is that in making informed decisions, leaders should endeavour to shut out the ‘noise’ of short-term, rapidly changing information, which is typically near worthless. Instead they should focus on the longer-term, underlying trend, which can be worth a great deal if you can find it.
Such thoughts occurred while reading a recent piece in The Economist that tackles one of the dominant concepts in business over the last two decades – arguably the dominant idea – that western businesses must focus their growth and investment in key emerging economies. As the article ‘Emerge, splurge, purge’ notes, so prevalent has become this orthodoxy that it has escaped any real debate: ‘Corporate strategy is usually a contentious subject: there are fierce debates about how big, diversified or leveraged firms should be. But geography has seduced everyone.’
Continue reading “‘Geography seduced everyone’ – is emerging market bias blind-siding your firm?”
‘A good time to take over’: Stephenson Harwood appoints new head of corporate as H1 revenues up by 17%
With Stephenson Harwood’s chief executive Sharon White this month reappointed for a further three-year term, the high profile transactional lawyer has relinquished her dual role as head of corporate to Andrew Edge, who concedes that ‘it is a good time to take over’, with the department’s revenues up by 17% in the first half of the 2013/14 financial year. Continue reading “‘A good time to take over’: Stephenson Harwood appoints new head of corporate as H1 revenues up by 17%”