Katy is The Lawyer’s Horizon editor. Returning to The Lawyer after a three-year break in 2020, Katy initially covered litigation and the Bar and was the publication’s senior writer between 2014 and 2017.
Paul Weiss’ UK spending spree is far from over. Just a year ago, this firm was small fry among the US City titans. Cue an audacious carve-out of some of Kirkland & Ellis’ superstars last summer and everything changed. That initial raid (which included debt finance heavyweight Neel Sachdev and corporate star Roger Johnson) was […]
It’s a 90-minute train journey to London and two hours from Bristol. At £29 per sq ft, grade A office rents are a third of the average £90 per sq ft City firms pay. And it has an abundance of lawyers. Slowly but steadily, Southampton is slipping into the mid-tier consciousness as a city in […]
Talk of associates losing faith in the partnership track is nowhere to be seen at Addleshaw Goddard, which recently unveiled its largest round to date. The partnership count is currently running at 429 – up 75 per cent from the 245 it housed back in 2019. Those promotions show a firm that is bullish about […]
There’s no doubt that firms are using non-UK growth to power their global figures. Of the 35 Top 50 firms for which The Lawyer has historical global revenue data, all but four saw higher growth outside the UK in the five years since 2019. Included in this group is Herbert Smith Freehillls (HSF), where London remains […]
Barclays’ legal team was once among the most influential in the UK. That power has diminished over the last decade, yet the banking giant still packs a punch when it comes to talent management. Some 40 lawyers are understood to have left Barclays in the UK last year. There are cost-cutting measures at play here, […]
Keystone Law, the poster child for the platform firm, is likely to break the psychologically important £100m revenue barrier in 2025. The success of this firm has spawned a new market, which is challenging traditional firms on the talent front. More than 3,500 lawyers now work across a variety of fee-sharing outfits, research from Atlas […]
Talent churn is accelerating among the junior ranks with today’s associates more mobile than the generations before them. The concept of long-term professional loyalty is fading as Gen Z rises. These lawyers ask not what they can do for you, but what your firm can do for them. This generational shift in working attitudes is […]
On Tuesday last week (9 April), the SRA sought to quell a rising tide of discontent around the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE). In its most recent SQE annual report, SRA chief executive Paul Philip said the public and profession could have “confidence” in this “rigorous assessment”. That confidence was short-lived. Yesterday (15 April), Philip was […]
Associate churn is gathering pace across some of the largest UK firms
In the lower echelons of The Lawyer UK200, some firms are contending with major succession issues that could mean there is little option to find a merger deal whatever the cost. Growth is increasingly hard to come by for the Independent firms (ranked 101-200), but that doesn’t mean it’s all doom and gloom. Analysis by […]
“The Government is using HMRC as an attack dog,” says a senior accountant. “It looks like a stealth tax raid on the professions,” chimes another partnership lawyer. These partnership specialists have been fielding calls from panicked financial directors (FDs) because fixed-share partners (FSPs) might not qualify as self-employed in the eyes of HM Revenue & […]
The rush by firms to have their net zero targets verified by the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) exemplifies a desire to have gold-plated climate pledges. Clarke Willmott became the latest firm to join the SBTi crew this week with its 2040 net zero plan. In setting the 2040 goal, it joins a climate conscious […]