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Alex Novarese

Alex Novarese

September 01, 2011 | International Edition

'Evolve or die', and other puff about law firms and social media

Belief can be a wonderful thing, but it can play havoc with your judgement. Take social media, a phenomenon that is changing the face of global communication in a way that largely speaks for itself. But is it changing the world of business, or legal services? You'd certainly think so from the emerging band of self-styled online gurus and hardened internet utopians that spare no opportunity to tell law firms that they need to get with it. A common defining characteristic of this breed is heavy deployment of ecological allusions in which law firms are told that they need to 'evolve or die'. While not always spelt out, said evolution seems to involve spending less time foraging for sustenance among bluechip companies and banks and rather more time using the new hunter-gatherer tools of blogging, tweeting or whatever verb you use to describe Facebook. To listen to some of this crowd you may conclude that having an awesome corporate Twitter account is the developmental equivalent for law firms of fire, the wheel or opposable thumbs.

By Alex Novarese

6 minute read

August 03, 2011 | International Edition

Lockstep 2.0: time to upgrade a trusty model

There seems to be something of a queue forming of firms looking to move away from a rigid lockstep partnership. This trend has been underway for years at mid-tier practices, but it goes further than that. Allen & Overy morphed into a managed lockstep years ago, while Clifford Chance deploys a salaried rank that it uses heavily for flexibility and a super-point pool that it doesn't. Now it seems that Linklaters and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – long standard-bearers of lockstep partnership – are exploring means to usher in more flexibility. It's surely a sensible development. The modern concept of lockstep is a curiously dogmatic thing, in many ways unsuited to the demands of the global law firm. For one, the gap between bottom and top earners is far too narrow to accommodate varying global markets. Lockstep is also out of, well, step with demographic changes, increasing the pressure for older partners to retire due to the punishing workloads that come with plateau earnings. Also problematic is its relationship with profits per equity partner (PEP). Combined slavishly, lockstep and PEP can lead firms to bend their business painfully to achieve arbitrary targets.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

August 01, 2011 | International Edition

Neuberger unveils privacy guidance and scheme to monitor injunctions

The use and scope of privacy injunctions will be formally monitored from today (1 August) under a pilot scheme launched by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger. The practice direction issued today sets out the terms by which non-disclosure injunctions will be recorded and transmitted to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) for analysis and publication in anonymised form.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

August 01, 2011 | International Edition

The legal profession's dirty secret... it's still a profession

In many minds it was decided years ago that the legal profession is that only in name, having long since abandoned professional status in any meaningful sense to become a business. The reasons for this conclusion are so obvious - expansion, financial transparency, adoption of modern management practices etc - that they barely need recounting. And, like most cliches, it became one because there's a good deal of truth in it.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

July 27, 2011 | International Edition

United fronts - the legal profession needs a more unified voice

One of the themes emerging from this week's extended look at the sweeping reform of legal aid currently going through Parliament is that lawyers in general struggle to mount effective campaigns for worthwhile shifts in public policy. In the case of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, it was always going to be an uphill struggle. Lawyers aren't that popular on the Clapham omnibus and that kind of painfully complex reform is very difficult to energise debate with. This political reality is why legal aid, despite being a relatively tiny slice of social provision, has seen its budget already curtailed considerably during the last decade – its current £2.1bn level actually peaked in real terms 10% higher back in 2003-04. All this before the Government gears up to knock another £350m annually off the budget via a huge withdrawal of civil legal aid.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

July 20, 2011 | International Edition

Taking the strain - more of the same in 2010-11 and bad news for some

Worries about eurozone debt, public sector cuts and expectations of a prolonged phase of low growth and weak deal activity – so similar is the picture emerging from this year's top 50 results, it was tempting to run last year's leader and hope no-one noticed.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

July 20, 2011 | International Edition

UK top 50 law firms endure gloom to post best growth figures since 2008

The UK's top law firms have endured turbulent market conditions to achieve their best growth performance since 2008 with the top 50 expanding its revenues by 3.6% over the last financial year. Legal Week's 2010-11 results show the UK top 50 increased its revenues from £11.89bn to £12.33bn – returning income across the group to almost exactly 2009 levels. The average revenue growth of top 50 law firms was 5.3%.

By Alex Novarese

5 minute read

July 13, 2011 | International Edition

Smoke signals - there's no easy way to judge verein-backed firms

I knew this one was brewing for months. When Legal Week got around to its annual table of law firm results, there was always going to be a mind-numbing debate about how to treat the law firms put together with multiple profit centres. In many ways, the days when UK tables from Legal Week or US tables from The American Lawyer neatly summed up the upper end of the global legal services market have already passed. With more than 1,500 lawyers working for foreign firms in London, the UK-based tables already fail to reflect a substantial element of the domestic market. Yet merely replacing them with global tables or UK-revenue specific figures in isolation doesn't look that practical.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read

July 08, 2011 | International Edition

The Screws no more – how dumb does that privacy 'debate' look now?

While I make no pretence to be an authority on the tabloid media, the escalating events of this week that culminated in the shock closure of the News of the World (NoW) do say much about an area I know a little more about: the collision between the law and media. This has been building for a long, long time. Though they were largely ignored by much of Fleet Street, the initial allegations regarding the NoW date back years and it was two years ago that The Guardian first made credible claims that phone-hacking was taking place at the tabloid on an industrial scale.

By Alex Novarese

5 minute read

July 06, 2011 | International Edition

Practical magic - will the magic circle emerge from recessionary hunker?

With results in from three of the magic circle and pretty good indications from Linklaters (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's being embargoed until tomorrow), the UK's leading law firms are shown as expected to have managed another year of managing. The numbers are basically fine. With the exception of Allen & Overy's (A&O's) 7% hike in revenues, the group has come in roughly static or with marginal growth in the top line. Profits are around where they have been in recent years – Clifford Chance (CC) edging up 8% on profits per equity partner (PEP) to scrape over the £1m PEP mark. All of which leaves the group of transactional deal machines as unassailable as they were before the wheels came off the deal wagon three years ago.

By Alex Novarese

3 minute read