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  • November 18, 2008 |

    Brown Rudnick seals City hire of Heller partner

    Brown Rudnick's London outpost has picked up one of the last remaining partners from the now-defunct Heller Ehrman. Intellectual property (IP) partner Richard Penfold, who is set to join Brown Rudnick's City corporate group, is the US firm's first IP partner to take up office in the UK.He represents clients in the software, cleantech, e-commerce, gaming, publishing, entertainment and digital media sectors.Penfold joined the stricken Heller in August from DLA Piper's London office, where he had been a partner since joining the firm in 2004.

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  • November 13, 2008 |

    City elite line up projects to mark annual Pro Bono Week

    Leading law firms across the City have boosted their not-for-profit activities this week to mark the seventh annual National Pro Bono Week.This year's event, which started on Monday (10 November), aims to highlight the pro bono contributions made through public legal education and partnerships which support the work of those agencies, such as Citizens Advice Bureaux and Law Centres.Simmons & Simmons is one of the most active firms during the week, holding a number of events including a talk from the chief executive of Kids Company - the firm's charity of the year - as well as reading sessions at a local primary school. The firm is using the week as an opportunity for lawyers to experience the type of work on offer and allow them to get involved for a few hours without any long-term commitment.

    1 minute read

  • November 12, 2008 |

    Addleshaws and A&O land Sky merger roles

    Addleshaw Goddard has secured a role alongside Allen & Overy (A&O) as media companies British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) and Tiscali move towards a tie-up. Addleshaws has been brought in to advise regular client Tiscali, which confirmed last week it is in exclusive talks with BSkyB to offload its UK assets in a deal that could be worth £450m. The national law firm is fielding a team under London-based relationship partner James Dawson to advise the struggling Italian group.

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  • November 7, 2008 |

    Appetising benefits

    "The pay per hour in an investment bank is undoubtedly much better than in a City law firm," concedes David Cheyne, senior partner of Linklaters. "It all turns on whether you're going to find it interesting here. Remember, 80% of the work is not about law. It's about the ability to draft, the ability to negotiate and the ability to give advice." While investment banks are fast losing their glamour - or going out of business - law firms such as Linklaters can offer graduates one significant edge: relative job security. Yet many young lawyers start their working life at commercial law firms with a heavy heart, recognising that the quid pro quo for good money and excellent training is very long hours.

    1 minute read

  • November 6, 2008 |

    City firms post solid H1 financials as nationals start to feel the pinch

    A band of City law firms look set to tough out the gloomy market with Lovells, Norton Rose, Trowers & Hamlins and CMS Cameron McKenna all expecting double-digit revenue growth for the first six months of the year.Norton Rose has said that it expects to see 11% growth over the first half of 2008-09 increasing revenue from £127.5m to £141.5m. Camerons has also had a solid first-half with a 10% increase in revenue from £103m to around £113m.Lovells is predicting to see 10%-plus revenue growth with the firm highlighting insolvency and restructuring, capital markets, intellectual property and corporate as strong performers.Trowers, which has a well-established practice in the much-courted Middle East market, has emerged as a leading performer, posting a 16% increase in income moving from £36.1m to £42m.Ashurst and Simmons & Simmons have both also managed to grow their first-half revenues by more than 5% against the same period in 2007, in what will be seen as credible performances.Norton Rose chief executive Peter Martyr told Legal Week: "We are looking good at the moment - our main practice areas are robust and we are well placed. But it is extremely hard to judge the future. There has never been such a degree of uncertainty as to what the immediate future will bring."Despite indications that many law firms have managed to maintain growth in the face of the slump, the 2008-09 year promises to display widely-diverging results, with a substantial proportion of firms seeing falls in revenue.Addleshaw Goddard, Eversheds, Halliwells and Wragge & Co have all this week confirmed dips in H1 revenue. Eversheds is down 4% to £188m from £196 while Halliwells sees its income drop by 3.1% to £44m from £45.4m.Eversheds chief executive David Gray said: "Given the economic turmoil of the last six months, it is not surprising that law firms are facing reduced revenues. "Eversheds has posted a small decline in revenues of just 4%, which is further evidence that the business is holding up well, with some areas seeing over 30% growth, such as competition and international."Addleshaws' income between April and October dropped to £94.7m from £97.5m on the same period last year. It is thought that Cobbetts' first half will be down around 5%-10%A spokesperson from Halliwells added: "There is no disputing that the market is extremely difficult at present and the remainder of the financial year is sure to prove just as challenging, but our core business remains strong and a number of our practice areas continue to perform very well."In addition, magic circle firms have this year been intensely secretive about their H1 results, despite expectations that the group has benefited from relatively busy foreign offices and a flight to quality with transactional mandates.

    1 minute read

  • October 30, 2008 |

    Top firms line up for 2008 British Legal Awards

    Ashurst, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters have been named among the nominees for a number of top accolades at the 2008 British Legal Awards. The trio have been shortlisted for the coveted law firm of the year award alongside Baker & McKenzie, Eversheds and Latham & Watkins.Linklaters has been shortlisted for three further awards, including cross-border M&A team of the year, while Freshfields is among the nominees for M&A team of the year. Allen & Overy also secured nominations in both of these categories.

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  • October 30, 2008 |

    A&O LLP specialist in Addleshaws move

    Addleshaw Goddard has boosted its professional practices and limited liability partnership (LLP) group with the hire of new partner Rachel Khiara.Khiara joins the national law firm from Allen & Overy, where she held the position of counsel. At A&O she assisted the funds group on the establishment of LLP fund managers, as well as advising on traditional partnership issues and LLP conversions. She will formally take up her new position next month (10 November).Richard Linsell, head of the professional practices and LLP group, said: "Few solicitors are real specialists in this practice area and none, other than our team at Addleshaw Goddard, do it all the time."Rachel has been involved in the LLP movement from its outset and is someone we have always admired. We have recruited her to help with client handling, where we have too many clients for the current partners to look after, and Rachel is looking forward to this exciting new role."The hire follows the top 20 UK law firm's separate announcement earlier this month it has made 16 redundancies in the last 12 months, including two part-time fee earners and 14 support staff. The cuts came across the firm's London, Leeds and Manchester practices.

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  • October 29, 2008 |

    Addleshaws partner joins Proskauer's City office

    Proskauer Rose has made its first partner-level hire in London since January with the arrival of Michael Crosby from Addleshaw Goddard. Crosby will head up the firm's corporate finance group in the City. He advisers lenders and borrowers on all aspects of acquisition financings, debt restructurings, recapitalisations and leveraged buyouts.Proskauer's London managing partner Matthew Hudson said: "Michael's background and practice will allow us to fully expand our finance platform into the UK and capitalise on these opportunities on behalf of our clients."

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  • October 23, 2008 |

    Addleshaws secures funding for £50m litigation

    Addleshaw Goddard has joined forces with a host of top names in the litigation funding market to launch a £50m action on behalf of a group of claimants against a London law firm. Addleshaws and three funders have signed up around 500 individuals to bring the claim against the law firm and a foreign business national over advice they gave on technology investment schemes, which they claim were unsuccessful.The group action, which is still to be filed, is being funded through a groundbreaking financial litigation package combining conditional fee agreements, after-the-event insurance (ATE) and third-party funding.

    1 minute read

  • October 14, 2008 |

    A&O takes lead on Britannia/Co-op merger talks

    Allen & Overy (A&O) has landed a mandate to advise Britannia Building Society on its merger discussions with Co-operative Financial Services (CFS). Corporate partner Richard Slynn is leading a team advising Britannia on the early stages of talks that could see a marriage between the two building societies, creating an organisation worth more than £70bn in assets.The instruction marks the second major M&A role for Slynn in as many months after Nationwide turned to longstanding adviser A&O on its August takeover of Derbyshire and Cheshire building societies.

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