A&O Shearman is set to cut 10% of its partnership, close its South Africa office and end its consulting business, in the firm’s first major reorganisation since it completed its merger this May.
I’ve always suspected that, like politics, careers in journalism largely end in failure. Here is how mine ends. After 20 years covering the legal industry, it’s time to do something else. Given that length of time, I hope my four regular readers will forgive the introspection of my final Legal Business column.
I was an accidental legal journalist, just a business reporter who ended up covering law while looking for the next sector to cover in my restless twenties. Business journalists should want to cover a sector that is large, competitive, has smart people and that Britain excels at. Law certainly ticked all those boxes, not that you’d know it from the lack of attention it gets outside its own media. Continue reading “Comment: Last orders – The final reflections of a veteran legal pundit”
I’m going to resist the urge to bang on about the year in review, Brexit or even offer a 2010s retrospective. Not much changed in the profession during the decade – apart from the much-documented onslaught of US law firms – and one way or another we will still be facing another Brexit cliff edge next year.
So we turn instead to something that touches the industry where it lives and breathes: partnership. It defines those who hold it, elevating some while corrupting others, shapes a huge global industry and remains the dominant motivational tool for the profession. The second most-read commentary I ever wrote at Legal Business was a piece earlier this year noting that major law firms have broken their social contract by pushing partnership promotions ridiculously late (the most read was a 2016 piece saying Ashurst needed to pull itself together). Continue reading “Comment: 2020 forecast – City giants forced to offer flexible partnership”
‘If you’re a partner and in control of someone’s career, that is an unequal relationship. Repeated drunken flings are not the work of a balanced, responsible partner. Could she have realistically said no? He was in control of her. He was her boss.’
So says one City employment veteran of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) prosecution and subsequent departure in October of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer restructuring partner Ryan Beckwith, following findings of sexual misconduct with a junior member of staff. It reveals uncomfortable truths about why, with its esoteric partnership structure and pressure-cooker working conditions, the legal industry is more susceptible than many to the fallout from #MeToo allegations and the behaviour that fuels them. Continue reading “Full disclosure – How to resolve the profession’s #MeToo problem”
I’m going to resist the urge to bang on about the year in review, Brexit or even offer a 2010s retrospective. Not much changed in the profession during the decade – apart from the much-documented onslaught of US law firms – and one way or another we will still be facing another Brexit cliff edge next year.
So we turn instead to something that touches the industry where it lives and breathes: partnership. It defines those who hold it, elevating some while corrupting others, shapes a huge global industry and remains the dominant motivational tool for the profession. The second most-read commentary I ever wrote at Legal Business was a piece earlier this year noting that major law firms have broken their social contract by pushing partnership promotions ridiculously late (the most read was a 2016 piece saying Ashurst needed to pull itself together). Continue reading “2020 forecast: City giants forced to offer flexible partnership”
Marco Cillario assesses the background to RPC’s decision to abandon all-equity structure
At a November press event held by a top-25 UK law firm, Legal Business was struck by a sudden spike in the guests’ interest in RPC. The 76-partner firm has long been a respected insurance and litigation business, and solid mid-weight operator, but not generally a firm to cause too many ripples of interest among peers. Continue reading “RPC’s surprise partnership shake-up signals focus on next generation but is the firm still playing too safe?”
Having recently shared a few drinks with one of the most talked-up youngish corporate lawyers in the City, the question came up about mid-way through as to what age they made partner. The answer: 36! And there lies much of what ails major law firms, though older partners continue to float around effecting increasingly unconvincing attitudes of surprise.
Consider a few issues for a moment. The haemorrhaging of female talent at mid-level from private practice. The disengagement of associates under 30 with major law firms. The loss of talented lawyers to US law firms. Client dissatisfaction with lack of partner time. Inter-generational tension in law firms. All of these issues have a common theme: the sustained yet unsustainable practice of major law firms pushing partnership decisions until far too late. And let’s be frank: routinely delaying partnership decisions until lawyers hit their mid-thirties is ludicrous. Continue reading “Comment: ‘This ain’t stewardship’ – delaying partnership until mid-30s is unsustainable”
Having recently shared a few drinks with one of the most talked-up youngish corporate lawyers in the City, the question came up about mid-way through as to what age they made partner. The answer: 36! And there lies much of what ails major law firms, though older partners continue to float around effecting increasingly unconvincing attitudes of surprise.
Consider a few issues for a moment. The haemorrhaging of female talent at mid-level from private practice. The disengagement of associates under 30 with major law firms. The loss of talented lawyers to US law firms. Client dissatisfaction with lack of partner time. Inter-generational tension in law firms. All of these issues have a common theme: the sustained yet unsustainable practice of major law firms pushing partnership decisions until far too late. And let’s be frank: routinely delaying partnership decisions until lawyers hit their mid-thirties is ludicrous. Continue reading “The big 30 – Make ‘em partner or you’ll lose ‘em”
It used to be that law firms were rather more comfortable doling out advice than receiving it, but in an increasingly complex and regulated environment, major law firms can no longer make do bluffing their way through. Given that corporate governance at law firms can often be much less virtuous than the example they preach to their clients, it takes a certain kind of tenacity for the growing band of advisers to the legal industry to influence their clients.
As Iain Miller, regulatory partner at law firm Kingsley Napley, puts it: the professionalisation of risk management over the last five to ten years has been ‘huge’, which has encouraged a fertile breeding ground for advisory firms offering services in the legal sector. Continue reading “Watching the watchmen – inside the growing market for legal advisory work”
Our cover feature this month largely speaks for itself in assessing the changing face of partnership as Millennials begin colonising the senior ranks of City law firms. Within five years, this group will be the driving force of elite commercial advisers.
Yet this column is not about the changing attitudes of youngish lawyers, more an issue that touches so many topics in the pages of this magazine, spanning remuneration, strategy, governance and talent. Quite simply, that is the success – and much more often failure – of leading law firms in balancing the interests of their younger ranks with their older partners. Continue reading “Comment: Yet unremarked, generational conflict cripples City law”
