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  • November 1, 2007 | International Edition

    Online special: Top City firms convert to brand values but wary of outside ratings

    Law firms are putting increasing value on the external perception of their brands, according to the results of the latest Legal Week Big Question survey, despite lingering scepticism from partners regarding 'voodoo valuations'. The survey, conducted in association with EJ Legal, follows the recent news that some of the world's top law firms are set to see themselves ranked by brand value in a new venture by the Managing Partners' Forum (MPF) and consultant Brand Finance.

    1 minute read

  • November 1, 2007 | International Edition

    Herbies ties up tender victory for £60bn MoD procurement project

    Herbert Smith has won a competitive tender to advise the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on a new project estimated to be worth around £60bn. The firm is advising the MoD on its Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) project, which will lead to the development of more than 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles.

    1 minute read

  • November 1, 2007 | International Edition

    UK elite to post budget-busting H1 results

    The UK's leading firms have enjoyed a strong first half of the year, despite turmoil in the credit markets, with the majority of the top 10 City firms ahead of budget for the last six months. Early indications show firms including Clifford Chance (CC) and Allen & Overy (A&O) are expecting to be well ahead of budget going into the third quarter. CC is currently reforecasting the second half of the year after revealing that it is significantly up on the same period last year.

    1 minute read

  • November 1, 2007 |

    UK elite to post budget-busting H1 results

    The UK's leading firms have enjoyed a strong first half of the year, despite turmoil in the credit markets, with the majority of the top 10 City firms ahead of budget for the last six months. Early indications show firms including Clifford Chance (CC) and Allen & Overy (A&O) are expecting to be well ahead of budget going into the third quarter. CC is currently reforecasting the second half of the year after revealing that it is significantly up on the same period last year.

    1 minute read

  • November 1, 2007 |

    Hammonds taps rivals for hires in the north

    Hammonds has appointed partners in its Leeds and Manchester offices with hires from two national rivals. Cobbetts commercial property partner Sonia Hopkinson has joined Hammonds' property team in the northwest after a 12-year stint at the Manchester firm. An additional seven lawyers from a range of practice areas are also joining Hammonds in Manchester over the next week.

    1 minute read

  • November 1, 2007 |

    DLA Piper, Eversheds, Addleshaws and Pinsents race ahead of national rivals in Euro M&A tables

    DLA Piper, Eversheds, Addleshaw Goddard and Pinsent Masons are well ahead of their national rivals in transactional performance over the last three years, new research has shown. Bespoke data provided exclusively to Legal Week by mergermarket shows the top four firms are well ahead of their national competitors on European and UK M&A deals since 2004 by both volume and value.

    1 minute read

  • November 1, 2007 |

    Online special: Top City firms convert to brand values but wary of outside ratings

    Law firms are putting increasing value on the external perception of their brands, according to the results of the latest Legal Week Big Question survey, despite lingering scepticism from partners regarding 'voodoo valuations'. The survey, conducted in association with EJ Legal, follows the recent news that some of the world's top law firms are set to see themselves ranked by brand value in a new venture by the Managing Partners' Forum (MPF) and consultant Brand Finance.

    1 minute read

  • November 1, 2007 |

    Herbies ties up tender victory for £60bn MoD procurement project

    Herbert Smith has won a competitive tender to advise the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on a new project estimated to be worth around £60bn. The firm is advising the MoD on its Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) project, which will lead to the development of more than 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles.

    1 minute read

  • October 31, 2007 |

    Adrian Wood: Akzo ruling stifles competition

    The long-awaited ruling by the Court of First Instance (CFI) in Akzo Nobel has for the moment removed all hope that in-house lawyers could invoke the same rights of legal professional privilege (LPP) for European Commission (EC) law purposes that are enjoyed by independent external lawyers. The fact that the CFI reached a pragmatic rather than a principled decision in a case that cried out for a principled analysis must make the disappointment experienced by in-house lawyers about their differential treatment even more acute, despite the reality of the last 25 years. The judgment warrants many criticisms but two stand out above the rest. Firstly, the ruling assumes incorrectly that in-house lawyers enjoy the luxury of delaying pressurised internal requests for high-level compliance assessments in order to access external legal advice; and secondly, there is no concrete evidence presented in the judgment suggesting that in-house lawyers observe rules of ethics that are so different to those applicable to external lawyers that the EC's task of ensuring competition compliance would be subverted. Indeed, the ruling appears premised on an unstated and unwelcome inference that competition law enforcement would become harder as a result of granting LPP to in-house lawyers.

    1 minute read

  • October 24, 2007 |

    Zurich to expand law firm scoring system

    Insurance giant Zurich is looking to expand a scoring system of its external legal advisers, making it the second major Swiss institution to introduce a wide-ranging process to formally grade lawyers.

    1 minute read