Alex Novarese

November 02, 2010 | International Edition

Will the issue never be resolved? As this week's analysis illustrates, more than a decade of intense debate has yet to settle the matter of whether Slaughter and May's boutique model has a place on the global legal stage. But credit where it's due: the 'best friends' concept has continued to confound critics. While it would be a stretch to say that it has thrived in Europe, it has done enough to keep Slaughters in the game.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

October 28, 2010 | International Edition

Embarrassingly, since Legal Week has recently been hip-deep in all things blog-related with our recent focus on social media, I've been remiss at blogging myself of late. Writing leaders and practice commentary is fine, but blogging takes a certain kind of inspiration that is hard to find when you're rusty. The idea for our extended article on bloggers was actually partly based on my attempts to cure writer's block as this year I've increasingly got into the habit of reading online publications and blogs to get the grey matter going (anything to stop me writing another blog about Chelsy Davy).

By Alex Novarese

4 minute read

October 27, 2010 | International Edition

Having been so long trailed, last week's Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) leaves commercial law firms largely where they were before Chancellor George Osborne detailed the deepest public spending cuts since World War II. That is because the coalition Government had already spelled out its broad fiscal position in June's emergency Budget - to eliminate the structural deficit over the life of this Parliament. Since then, the Con/Lib coalition has gone out of its way to ram home the austerity message, understandably on the basis that it's best to get this out the way while the public will still blame the former administration.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

October 20, 2010 | International Edition

Does the global litigation law firm model work? This disturbing question has been explicitly raised this month by news of a 12-partner exodus from the European network of disputes and intellectual property (IP) specialist Howrey. Indeed, departing partners from Howrey, who are heavily concentrated in the firm's Amsterdam and Brussels offices, have made much of the problems of working within a US-based firm. The argument goes that the US' generally stricter conflicts rules are a real hurdle for litigators operating in Europe, particularly when the bulk of the practice is weighted stateside, which makes it inevitable that American clients will get the upper hand in a close call on conflicts.

By Alex Novarese

4 minute read

October 20, 2010 | International Edition

October is panning out to be the cruellest month when it comes to diversity and the law. Last week we had the much-anticipated (and highly predictable) review of higher education funding by Lord Browne, while as Legal Week went to press the coalition Government was preparing the results of its comprehensive spending review (CSR). Both events look set to have a substantial impact on the profession, though the negative financial outcome will be felt by lawyers paid far less than Legal Week's core audience.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

October 13, 2010 | International Edition

The Legal Services Act (LSA) bores me a bit. That's a slightly embarrassing admission from someone in my line of work, but there it is. Partly, I think it's because Legal Week years ago broke the news of the Clementi review, which led to the LSA, and consequently we were getting excited about it well before most of the profession. Now that it's increasingly on seasoned lawyers' agendas, for journalists - whose long-term attention spans suffer from a daily onslaught of deadlines - it's been hard to get back on point.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

October 08, 2010 | International Edition

Macfarlanes has appointed banking head Julian Howard as its new managing partner, with senior partner Charles Martin confirmed for a second term. Howard will take over as managing partner from Simon Martin, who is returning to full-time fee earning in the City law firm's corporate practice, from 1 January.

By Alex Novarese

2 minute read

October 06, 2010 | International Edition

At a drinks reception last week with Slaughter and May, the familiar topic came up of how and why the firm's structurally-lite approach appears to deliver. This is, on one hand, a deceptive point. Slaughters doesn't have a strategy in the conventional sense of the word - it has a culture and a group of common attitudes. Its strategy is merely the expression of what the partners want to do anyway.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

September 29, 2010 | International Edition

Have international law firms really adjusted to a world in which national Bar restrictions will be a severe impediment to their ambitions rather than just a minor irritant? After all, the substantial internationalisation of the UK legal profession since the late 1990s was closely linked to assumptions about the development and integration of a single market within the European Union. In essence, the huge strategic bet that City law firms took was based upon the prediction that Europe would develop into a genuinely unified trading block. This was symbolised more than anything by the aggressive push into Germany between 1999 and 2002, which saw foreign law firms come to dominate the top end of the commercial market. A similar pattern was repeated in other Western economies, if not quite so dramatically. Now that push seems quaintly of a different age - indeed, City firms, having won their prize, have been quietly retrenching and pruning their European practices for five years while EU integration has yet to live up to the hype. But the question remains whether this experience has really geared up City law firms to address a world in which the international jurisdictions they increasingly covet are blocked by Bar rules often applied with protectionist intent.

By Alex Novarese

4 minute read

September 29, 2010 | International Edition

Technology occupies a curious space in the legal community. On one hand, City law firms fall over themselves to appear forward-thinking in relation to technology and lawyers have generally been eager to hop on the social media bandwagon. Likewise, lawyers became addicted to mobile gadgets years ago, with the BlackBerry quickly winning the profession's heart, even if a few are now casting lustful glances in Apple's direction. But in many ways, the debate regarding technology for law firms as businesses has become ghettoised over the last 10 years. In the late 1990s, when the first tech-boom was in full effect and the IT-fuelled predictions of Richard Susskind were inspiring and irritating in equal measure, the topic was much on the mind of managing partners. At the time many firms were throwing money at IT, in some cases with little to show for it.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read