The legal profession has witnessed a subtle but nevertheless significant change over the last five or six years in the relationship between the partner and the firm. The cosy, club-like atmosphere has been discarded, and lawyers are under heavy pressure to perform to justify their existence. The bond of trust between partner and firm has […]
Nabarro Nathanson has effectively closed the Dubai office it opened four and a half years ago. Its Dubai-based partner Tony Pennington is to return to the UK to work in Nabarros’ Sheffield office and Jeremy Key, a partner in the Dubai office of Fox & Gibbons for seven years, has moved into Nabarros’ office in […]
AN INCREASE in commercial and corporate legal work could lead to a boom in the legal recruitment market, recruitment consultants Richard Owen & Harper have claimed. A survey of 43 firms by the consultants revealed that 98 per cent had recruited permanent fee earners between October 1995 and March 1996. Of those, 86 per cent […]
A University of Cambridge professor has been appointed as a consultant to the national planning team of Eversheds. Professor Malcolm Grant is the country’s leading authority on planning law and will assist Eversheds in the development of its planning practice. Grant, author of the Encyclopedia of Planning Law and Practice – considered by many to […]
John Toulmin QC, of 3 Verulam Buildings, has been appointed to the services panel of the dispute resolution body of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the successor to GATT. Toulmin, an ex-president of the Council of Bars and Law Societies, is one of six officials to be nominated by the UK Government for the WTO’s […]
IT SEEMS Newcastle firm Dickinson Dees is simply bristling with musical talent. The firm is the principal sponsor of a week-long music festival taking place in Newcastle this month. The festival, called MIX, will feature live jazz, rock classical and folk music and will see a host of internationally renowned musicians descend on the City. […]
Charity administration has undergone massive changes during the past few decades and this has raised questions about the role of the charity trustee. For example, should the trustee be paid for work which is, by definition, of benefit to the community? Whereas trustees would have been heavily involved in the management and implementation of policy […]
First, the good news. The opportunities for profitable investment in IT systems have never been better for law firms. In the past, the market for legal IT suffered from its small size in relation to the whole IT market and was dominated by a limited number of specialist products. Now that domination is challenged by […]
LIZ DAVIES, the left-wing Labour councillor and barrister who was rejected as a parliamentary candidate by the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) last September, has accepted an undisclosed but “modest” libel payout along with a public apology from the Financial Times. Solicitor Keith Schilling, acting for Davies, told Mr Justice French that Davies, an […]
From every point of view, the National Lottery has proved more significant than most of us envisaged. Its turnover has been four or five times greater than anticipated, and every hope and fear has been proportionally inflated. Much anxiety is expressed about the independence of the National Lotteries Charities Board (NLCB) and the degree to […]
The market for commercial legal services is set to expand for the third consecutive year, according to a corporate survey conducted by City law firm Manches & Co. Of the more than 1,000 businesses surveyed in the annual report there is a 16 per cent net increase in the number of firms expecting to use […]
The fourth largest law firm in the US, Weil Gotshal & Manges, is planning to more than triple the size of its London office over the next few years, bringing its strength to about 100 lawyers by the year 2000. The expansion plans are among the most ambitious drawn up by a US firm operating […]