Growing confidence and smaller intakes boost Magic Circle’s trainee retention rates

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February saw a flurry of trainee retention rates announced, with the Magic Circle and top-tier firms posting higher rates than in 2014, though taken from smaller pools of young lawyers.

Allen & Overy (A&O) kept on the highest proportion of trainees among Magic Circle firms, with 93% (or 43 out of 46) newly-qualified lawyers being kept on – an increase from the 84% posted last year. Peer firms Clifford Chance and Linklaters were close behind, both unveiling retention rates of 91%, with 41 and 49 trainees staying on respectively. Figures were slightly lower at Slaughter and May, which kept on 37 newly-qualified lawyers (NQs) out of 42, or a rate of 88%, while Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer had the lowest rate of 85%, with 41 staying on from a cohort of 48.

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A robust year for M&A shows challenge for City leaders in competing with US rivals

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With no single UK law firm having made a significant impact on the US market, it was no surprise that the Magic Circle surrendered more ground to their US peers in the annual M&A league tables for 2014, given the deal splurge US corporates have been on.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters, Allen & Overy (A&O) and Clifford Chance (CC) all slipped down Thomson Reuters’ global adviser rankings for value of deals completed during 2014. Ironically, Slaughter and May, which markets to clients and US law firms for UK advisory spots on US deals, was the only Magic Circle firm to rise up the law firm rankings for global M&A, jumping from 28th to 12th.

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League Tables: Gap between US firms and Magic Circle widens as UK firms slump in 2014 deal rankings

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The Magic Circle lost ground in the global M&A rankings as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters, Allen & Overy (A&O) and Clifford Chance (CC) all lost places to US rivals, with London-headquartered firms badly impacted by a jittery European deals market that saw a large number of deals collapse.

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Comment: The cost of culture – HSF finds mega-mergers always come at a price

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This month’s cover feature on Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) looks in hindsight like the end of an informal trilogy on storied London firms agreeing high-stakes mergers, following earlier pieces on Hogan Lovells and Ashurst.

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The cost of culture – HSF finds mega-mergers always come at a price

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This month’s cover feature on Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) looks in hindsight like an informal trilogy on storied London firms agreeing high-stakes mergers, following earlier pieces on Hogan Lovells and Ashurst.

Taken together, patterns and contrasts emerge. The legacy Herbert Smith, Lovells and Ashurst were all wrestling with similar cultural and strategic issues ahead of their unions as they struggled to compete against larger and more driven rivals.

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Magic Circle real estate withdrawal isn’t a myth, but it’s not that simple

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In a 2011 piece on the decimated real estate market in the City, we noted that few senior property partners were in their mid-40s, due to the fact that law firms largely ceased hiring junior real estate lawyers following the early ’90s crash. It looks like history will repeat itself in roughly 15 years’ time: post-credit crunch, the most established real estate practices went into hibernation. Some started to disintegrate. Either way, if you were a trainee interested in real estate around 2010, pickings were slim.

But, as we report in ‘Back in the game’ on pages 48-54, real estate is back with a vengeance and some partners would have you believe it never really went away. The most popular line of argument is that there is a wealth of opportunity out there for City and national firms because the Magic Circle has been progressively retrenching in property for years.

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Deal watch: Corporate activity in October 2014

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MAGIC CIRCLE DUO TAKE KEY ROLES ON MULTIBILLION TRAIN LEASE COMPANY SALE

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer acted for the sellers, a consortium of asset management firms, in the sale of Porterbrook Rail Finance, one of the three major train leasing companies in the UK. Linklaters advised the buyers, which included Hastings Funds Management and Allianz Capital Partners.

 

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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.

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‘Clifford Chance is brave to be looking at these things’: City giant mulls move towards all-equity

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Latest proposed changes by Magic Circle firm after recent overhaul of governance structure

Having taken the summer to vote through a substantive overhaul of its governance structure, the autumn agenda of Clifford Chance (CC) will see the partnership consider whether the firm should move to an all-equity model.

The Magic Circle firm currently deploys a single profit pool, lockstep system and partners spend three years as juniors before progressing onto the equity, which ranges between 40 and 100 units.

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Women in law – rising up the agenda but female lawyer numbers continue to slide at elite UK law firms

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Even for the most jaded denizen of the City legal community it’s been hard to avoid noticing the greater emphasis that law firms have put on diversity in recent years. While social mobility was in the spotlight several years ago with the cross-industry launch of PRIME, 2014 has seen a rash of law firms announce concrete targets to improve female representation in their partnerships.

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