Cadbury has exhausted all avenues to trademark the colour purple after its application to appeal was refused by the Supreme Court. The chocolate maker was refused the chance to register its iconic purple shade – otherwise known as Pantone 2685C – when Lords Neuberger, Wilson and Hughes found it did not raise an arguable point […]
Recent Asia partner promotions statistics from eight international firms over the past four years suggests local senior lawyers stand a good chance of being made up. It is the time of the year again when global firms start to announce which of their lucky associates have made it to the partnership.Today Linklaters confirmed that its partner […]
How much debt is too much debt? For many lawyers the answer to this question is still “any”. But is that really the right response? Today The Lawyer unveils its first-ever extensive research into debt levels across the vast majority of the UK’s largest law firms. In a dense report packed with startling statistics, such […]
Covington & Burling has advised new client Horizon Discovery on its admission to the Aim market, as the biotech market continues to pick up in the UK. Covington’s City office won the mandate thanks to an existing relationship with the new chairman of Horizon’s board, Ian Gilham. He turned to the firm in his former […]
Macfarlanes has made up nine lawyers to partner in its largest-ever round of promotions, across a range of practice areas including corporate, funds and financial services. The six men and three women promoted include five lawyers who trained at Macfarlanes. Macfarlanes’ previous high in terms of the number of new partners was six in 2005 […]
Pinsent Masons has added to its Asian infrastructure group with the hire of Formosan Brothers construction and disputes partner Helena Chen in Beijing. Chen joined today (7 April) from the Taiwanese firm, where she founded the construction team in 2002. She is the latest in a string of hires to the firm’s Asia offices. At […]
Scottish private equity heavyweight Dickson Minto has turned charity fundraiser, with a hugely successful London to Paris ride now heading for North Africa. Earlier this morning (7 April) Dickson Minto partner Douglas Armstrong and friends Campbell McDermid and Douglas Anderson cycled off from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, heading south. The self-styled ‘Fat Dads on Bikes’ […]
Linklaters’ partner promotions have fallen to 21 from 24 in 2013 and the firm has reduced its focus on the mainstream corporate group. The magic circle firm made up partners across 11 jurisdictions and eight practice areas but this year promoted only three made up in mainstream corporate compared to seven last year (29 April […]
The Lawyer’s sister title Lawyer 2B is the place to find out all news and analysis about graduate recruitment, legal education, trainee retention and career development. If you’re a student, then bookmark immediately for everything you need to know about becoming a lawyer. ULaw overtakes BPP as most expensive LPC provider, while City and UWE […]
Weil Gotshal & Manges has lured Goldman Sachs star Andrew Wilkinson back into legal practice to boost its pan-European restructuring business. Wilkinson, who was voted in by the Weil Gotshal partnership on Friday (4 April), will join the US firm at the end of this month. In 1997 Wilkinson left Clifford Chance, where he […]
Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) has come top of the charts of UK firms ranked by debt in new data compiled by The Lawyer. Last year the firm reported a net debt of £124.9m in its global LLP accounts, more than any other firm that filed accounts in the UK market for the 2012/13 period. HSF’s […]
Today’s issue of The Lawyer is a first: we survey 153 LLP accounts taken from the list of firms in The Lawyer’s UK 200 to investigate debt levels within the UK’s leading legal practices. While we have a caveat that there are many varieties of partnership funding, what is clear is that a traditionally conservative […]