One phone will boldly go where no voicemail has gone before after The Lawyer Awards tonight, with a personal voicemail message from Sir Patrick Stewart among the raffle prizes up for grabs. Stewart has offered the prize to raise money for UK domestic violence charity Refuge, the charity partner for The Lawyer Awards 2014. The world-renowned […]
Scottish firm Maclay Murray & Spens has led on the administration of Jane Norman after the firm’s client Edinburgh Woollen Mill bought the retailer out of administration in 2011. Around 24 of Jane Norman’s UK and Ireland shops have gone into administration, trade title Retail Week reported yesterday (24 June 2014), though the budget retailer’s online […]
A full two decades ago, The Lawyer launched its first-ever awards. They were billed as being devoted to finding excellence in the legal profession, and 20 years on, the same applies. Back then, the categories on offer were very different, but the firms entering were surprisingly similar. Some (Booth & Co and Stephens Innocent) have […]
In a typically provocative opinion piece this week, Mark Brandon muses on the research by US consultant Bruce MacEwen, which finds (and I paraphrase) that fiddling around with financial levers does not lead to increased performance. Brandon rightly argues that tinkering with metrics is not the path to success. It’s knowing who you are and […]
Culture will absorb management’s attention now the corporate business is rooted Last month when RPC reported its first fall in net profit in five years, managing partner Jonathan Watmough insisted the culprit was his firm’s long-term investments. The profit dip in the all-equity partnership also meant a fall in average profit per equity partner (PEP), […]
Stoic lawyers who keep the wheels of business turning in conflict zones With the headlines dominated by news of bombs in Gaza, continuing violence in Ukraine and multiple crises in other parts of the world, it can sometimes be forgotten that, for those who are living in these regions and often facing terrible conditions, normal […]
Why is lawyers’ pay so high? Not because it benefits the business, say the stats Ah, summer. A time to kick back, to look at law firms’ numbers coming in ahead of The Lawyer’s annual UK 200 analysis and wonder what I would do if I earned £400,000, £500,000 or £600,000 – or even £1.4m […]
Jackson, legal aid cuts and pressure on fees have put the bar on course for a fractured future where commercial stars race ahead and others hit a dead end The bar is anything but immune from the changes coursing through the UK legal market and, as new data for The Lawyer’s UK 200 reveals, there […]
Navigating the renewals maze for PII has only got harder. We provide a guide to the sector’s underwriters while brokers advise on the best line of action As hundreds of firms prepare to renew their insurance cover for the next year, so many will discover this is a market that has been subjected, once again, […]
Israel’s conflict with Hamas-controlled Gaza is escalating. Is this a place where lawyers can still do international business? The only certainty around Israel is that nothing is certain – the geo-political picture is evolving by the day. As one Israeli lawyer comments when asked to forecast practice trends for the next six months, “In some […]
Entries for this year’s Lawyer Awards Funds Team of the Year saw innovative structures and many firsts for good causes Investment funds cover a multitude of areas, and the flexibility of the structures on offer these days means this is one practice area that really rewards innovation. That was the single uniting factor among the […]
Move of the week Hogan Lovells has recruited real estate finance partners Andrew Flemming and Jo Solomon to join its London finance practice. The pair join from Berwin Leighton Paisner, where they were both partners. Flemming’s transactional experience includes advising Barclays Capital on a £660m loan-on-loan to Maybourne Finance while Solomon’s deals include advising on […]