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  • February 14, 2013 |

    And now for the hard part – after five mergers, can Norton Rose's CEO tackle his biggest challenge yet?

    When Norton Rose's merger with US firm Fulbright & Jaworski goes live on 1 June, it will have completed its fifth tie-up in just three-and-a-half years. Given that even one merger is beyond the ability of many of the UK's leading players, the achievement cannot be underestimated. The unions mean that in just 42 months, Norton Rose will have transformed itself from an also-ran UK law firm with a smattering of international offices and turnover of £314m into a global giant operating in 55 locations around the world with revenues approaching £1.3bn.

    1 minute read

  • February 14, 2013 |

    Crunch time – the real work is just beginning for Norton Rose

    Five quick-fire international mergers and three-and-a-half years are all it will have taken Norton Rose to transform its business from struggling UK mid-tier practice to global giant by the time its merger with Fulbright & Jaworski goes live this summer. Any way you look at it, the scale of what the firm has achieved is impressive, as our analysis this week illustrates. Even rivals – usually quick to criticise – readily concede that the mergers Norton Rose has pushed through are hard to knock.

    1 minute read

  • February 14, 2013 |

    Norton Rose hands top global board role to Australia chairman

    Norton Rose has appointed Australia chair Adrian Ahern as the new global chairman of the Norton Rose Group, as preparations for its June merger with Texas firm Fulbright & Jaworski gather pace. Ahern will succeed Norman Steinberg as head of the firm's global supervisory board, which currently includes 14 members across the group, in addition to Steinberg. Ahern will also take up a non-exec position on the global executive committee.

    1 minute read

  • February 12, 2013 |

    K&L takes Fulbright partner ahead of Norton Rose tie-up for Houston launch

    K&L Gates has opened in Houston with the hire of Fulbright & Jaworski's head of securities, Charles Strauss. Strauss has worked for Fulbright for 30 years and served on the firm's partner committee, as well as several diversity and inclusion committees. His exit comes ahead of Fulbright's merger with Norton Rose this June.

    1 minute read

  • February 7, 2013 |

    Norton Rose moots funding options for global expansion into new regions

    Norton Rose is in the early stages of looking at how to fund expansion into new regions, as it gears up for this June's merger with US outfit Fulbright & Jaworski. The firm, which already operates a shared account across Norton Rose Group to cover central costs such as IT, finance, branding and research and development, is looking at how the cost of new launches can best be shared between different parts of the business.

    1 minute read

  • February 1, 2013 |

    Norton Rose top earner took home £1m for last financial year, accounts reveal

    Norton Rose's highest earning member pocketed just over £1m in 2011-12 - a 22% increase on the previous year, according to financial documents recently filed with Companies House. The profit share entitlement - revealed in the limited liability partnership (LLP) accounts for Norton Rose LLP, which covers the original Norton Rose UK and international business but exclude its mergers in Canada, South Africa and Australia - compares with an equivalent figure of £839,000 the previous year.

    1 minute read

  • January 17, 2013 | International Edition

    New Year, new start?

    As omens go, news this week that HMV has finally called in administrators while CMS Cameron McKenna is to make around 40 redundancies in the UK means, barely three weeks in, 2013 is not getting off to an upbeat start. The UK law firm's redundancy plans make CMS only the latest in a fast-growing list of practices planning to scale back staff numbers in response to the prolonged malaise in Western economies.

    1 minute read

  • December 19, 2012 |

    Legal Week news round-up: the best of 2012

    Legal Week's most-read stories of the last twelve months, including major international mergers such as the tie-up of Australia's Freehills with Herbert Smith, and the news that A&O had asked Hong Kong partners to leave the firm...

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  • December 13, 2012 |

    Editor's Award - Law Firm Leader of the Year: Peter Martyr

    You have to cast your mind back a long way to remember how far Norton Rose had fallen when Peter Martyr (pictured) first took over as the firm's head in 2002. The firm, which had suffered major damage in the early 1990s due to two IRA bomb blasts, was at the time wrestling with strategic discord, a large loss-making international network and falling profits.

    1 minute read

  • December 13, 2012 |

    Tell your own story – the profession should sell its success

    As we put the full write-up of the British Legal Awards to bed for the final issue of 2012, it seems an apt moment to reflect on the achievements of the legal profession in what proved yet another challenging year. And they are considerable. Law is a startling success story for British business, contributing over £20bn to the domestic economy annually and in the region of £3bn in exports – a figure that has nearly tripled against a decade ago. And this a material underestimate, since such official figures focus on private practice and fail to capture the huge expansion of in-house legal departments over the past 20 years. Well over 250,000 are employed in the law and directly-related fields in the UK.

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