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A good war for Freshfields and A&O – the big four in the recession
With Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's financial results today confirmed, some judgments can be made about how the UK's big four law firms have fared over the recession and the subsequent slump in commercial activity - a period roughly spanning 2008-09...
08 Jul 2010 | 11:41 | 24 comments
A defeat for the FSA, but there’s no turning the regulatory tide
Well, you win some you lose some. On the day that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced its largest-ever civil fine, against JP Morgan, the City watchdog also suffered a defeat in its high-profile attempt to secure an insider trading convic...
04 Jun 2010 | 13:35
Hogan Lovells' children and Wilde Sapte's final goodbye
If imitation is flattery then the newly-launched Hogan Lovells must be feeling well and truly buttered up this week with the news that Denton Wilde Sapte is to merge with Chicago's Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. After all, the deal's structure is a ca...
27 May 2010 | 14:17 | 1 comment
Editor's comment: The leadership test
Are law firms inherently bad at management? This argument was voiced at a panel debate I attended last week and it's certainly not the first time I have heard such sentiments. The essence of the claim is that even large commercial law firms come up ba...
26 May 2010 | 09:50 | 2 comments
Apparently law firms do something called law
The last few months have been something of a learning experience for me. Having spent a fair few years reporting mainly on the business of law, the launch of Legal Week Law, our new online database of briefings and reports, has given me a chance to lo...
18 May 2010 | 09:55
SJ Berwin's US strategy Part II – time to dance with... Proskauer Rose
With Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe this week pulling the plug on a merger bid with SJ Berwin, the question now is whether the UK firm pushes on with its efforts to secure a US merger. As best as can be gathered, it was never quite as simple as a tw...
06 May 2010 | 17:05
Luke Johnson's indecent cowboys – great lawyer-bashing (some of it even accurate)
There's nothing like a bit of lawyer-bashing to get the grey matter engaged, at least when I'm not feeling that inspired. So today my attention turned to a spot of legal battery in an entertaining column from Luke Johnson, head of Risk Capital Partner...
07 Apr 2010 | 17:35 | 10 comments
As close as we're gonna get to an April Fools story (RIP Legal Week’s Diary page)
Since hilarious April Fools stories aren't really our style - unless you're amused by Kafkaesque tales of endless SRA consultations - we're not going to do a spoof story today. But to give readers something lighter before they head off for the long we...
01 Apr 2010 | 10:16
Reshaping Ashurst: trials and triangulations
For many City firms, terms like size and shape mean getting smaller. In Ashurst's case, as this week's analysis makes clear, the business has been genuinely refashioned over the last two years. So while around 30 partners have been managed out thro...
26 Mar 2010 | 12:30
Law firm strategy – this stuff helps a bit
Having personally failed to find much evidence that Linklaters will face more than the flakiest class action litigation for its walk-on role in the Lehman Brothers collapse, I'm instead returning to the theme of a recent leader, which argued that many...
15 Mar 2010 | 16:45
Libel reform suddenly – score one for the blogosphere
With libel reform being sporadically debated for years, mostly with little expectation of action, justice secretary Jack Straw's announcement this week that the Government is to virtually abolish success fees for defamation cases has rather caught eve...
05 Mar 2010 | 16:18 | 2 comments
Freshfields' pay round: market-leading again in many senses
Well, the 2010 pay round for City assistants has largely already been set, and we didn't even make it out of February. That is because Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer - having quite rightly led the market in early 2009 by halting its assistant lockstep...
01 Mar 2010 | 13:15 | 1 comment
Communications breakdown
The question of what clients want from their external legal advisers and how law firms meet this demand may well be nothing new, but two recent examples suggest that this is an area where there is still a significant lack of communication.
22 Feb 2010 | 15:11
SJ Berwin's US strategy – time to dance?
For as long as I can remember there has been talk of when or whether SJ Berwin would try to put together a merger with a US law firm. For a firm with a thrusting US-style culture and a tempting European footprint for an international suitor, it isn't ...
11 Feb 2010 | 15:40
A&O in Oz – on the cards, sort of
February is already shaping up to be an eventful month with the news today that Allen & Overy (A&O) is making its debut in Australia with a 17-partner team coming just days after Latham & Watkins reinforced its international network with a 13-partner ...
08 Feb 2010 | 15:52
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