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  • December 7, 2012 |

    Bond Pearce and Dickie Dees seal merger to create Bond Dickinson

    Partners from Bond Pearce and Dickinson Dees have voted through a merger under the name Bond Dickinson, creating a £95m firm with offices in eight UK locations. The tie-up, which will go live on 1 May next year, will create a firm with 136 partners and a total of around 1,200 staff, with their combined revenues placing the new firm inside the UK top 40.

    1 minute read

  • December 6, 2012 | International Edition

    Friends with benefits – can Linklaters go a third way to globalisation?

    Linklaters & Alliance has long since been consigned to history. But as firms of all sizes try to reposition themselves in today's marketplace, Links seems to be making its best efforts to create a second version, albeit with a very different vision. Its forthcoming alliance with South Africa's Webber Wentzel – just months after a similar tie-up with Australian leader Allens – means it has this year gained access to 1,000 lawyers in strategically touted markets with no financial outlay and no appreciable risk. And if the passing years show Linklaters needs more from the relationship than just an alliance, then it is well-positioned to turn it into something more (or perhaps cherry-pick choice individuals).

    1 minute read

  • December 6, 2012 |

    Friends with benefits – can Linklaters go a third way to globalisation?

    Linklaters & Alliance has long since been consigned to history. But as firms of all sizes try to reposition themselves in today's marketplace, Links seems to be making its best efforts to create a second version, albeit with a very different vision. Its forthcoming alliance with South Africa's Webber Wentzel – just months after a similar tie-up with Australian leader Allens – means it has this year gained access to 1,000 lawyers in strategically touted markets with no financial outlay and no appreciable risk. And if the passing years show Linklaters needs more from the relationship than just an alliance, then it is well-positioned to turn it into something more (or perhaps cherry-pick choice individuals).

    1 minute read

  • December 4, 2012 |

    Norton Rose takes on PwC general counsel for top-level advisory role

    Norton Rose has appointed former PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) UK general counsel Owen Jonathan to a newly-created role of senior adviser to the firm's global executive committee. The new role, which will commence from January 2013, will see Jonathan advising the committee on global structure and risk management issues as well as on the future development of Norton Rose.

    1 minute read

  • November 30, 2012 |

    Norton Rose bulks up in Beijing with hire of King & Wood banking partner

    Norton Rose has secured a key hire for its Beijing office with the addition of banking partner Li Jinnan from King & Wood Mallesons. Jinnan, who has extensive experience of representing Chinese banks, will be the first native speaker and PRC-qualified partner on the team.

    1 minute read

  • November 29, 2012 |

    The view from 9th Avenue – the emerging challenges facing New York's elite

    "Who we are hasn't changed at all in some ways over the years. At a partners' meeting recently someone showed me a letter written by Paul Cravath in 1920 and it was almost the same format that we use today," reflects Cravath Swaine & Moore incoming presiding partner Allen Parker. "Really, it was almost identical." Welcome to Manhattan, the most singular, individualistic, contradictory and competitive legal market in the world. As the rest of the global legal profession changes to reflect the impact of the post-Lehman Brothers world and the rise of finance hubs and economies in the east, it seems that many lawyers in Manhattan's hermetically sealed environment carry on as if little has changed.

    1 minute read

  • November 22, 2012 | International Edition

    Rage against the machine – can Linklaters still do the vision thing?

    Lauded as a world-beater during the boom, Linklaters found itself in 2012 dogged by controversy and discord after its latest restructuring. Georgina Stanley asks if the City icon can still do the vision thing

    1 minute read

  • November 22, 2012 |

    Norton Rose chief gears up for post-merger expansion in New York and LatAm

    Norton Rose chief executive Peter Martyr is gearing up to expand in locations including New York and Latin America as the firm prepares to go live with its $2bn (£1.26bn) merger with Houston's Fulbright & Jaworski in June 2013. The Norton Rose Fulbright tie-up will give the firm 800 lawyers across 11 offices in the US, with 110 of these in New York, including 50 partners.

    1 minute read

  • November 22, 2012 |

    Changing games – Norton Rose's rise heralds a changing profession

    It looked significant at the time but in retrospect the 2010 tie-up between Lovells and Hogan & Hartson genuinely marked – and itself influenced – the changing shape of the legal industry. Not only because it constituted a transatlantic union between two major firms, but because the pair chose to deploy a multi-profit centre structure that has since been widely used over the last two years. Some deals haven't dazzled but none looks more significant than last week's news that Norton Rose has secured a tie-up with Fulbright & Jaworski. But then arguably it was Norton Rose that created the model for Hogan Lovells with its takeover of Deacons. Rivals scoffed but it kicked off a run of deals in Australia by firms that see themselves as well above Norton Rose's station. The underlying point? The Fulbright deal highlights the extent to which the last five years have seen industry-defining activity occurring outside the magic circle. Of course, claims that London's legal elite would wither in the face of recession were nonsense but, as a group, neither have they displayed quite the dominance we've come to expect, as we address in this week's analysis on Linklaters.

    1 minute read

  • November 22, 2012 |

    Norton Rose's US merger wins plaudits as doubts surround ambitious Dentons deal

    Norton Rose's transatlantic tie-up with Fulbright & Jaworski has received broad approval from law firm partners, against a more sceptical reponse to the other major merger deal of recent weeks – the proposed three-way union of SNR Denton, Salans and Canada's Fraser Milner Casgrain (FMC). Legal Week's latest Big Question survey found that 61% of partners believe Norton Rose's merger with US firm Fulbright – which is set to go live in June 2013 – is a good deal, with 19% unsure and the remaining 20% having a negative view of the tie-up.

    1 minute read