After several years of dramatic moves in the private equity community, City observers have been waiting a while for a really interesting transfer, so perhaps it is surprising that, when it came, it wasn't a law firm that was doing the hiring.

The appointment in question, of course, is Charles Barter's move to become Bridgepoint Capital as general counsel. By any standard, it is an interesting move. The Travers Smith veteran has impeccable buy-out credentials, having helped to co-found the firm's much-admired private equity team in 1996.

And while the firm is viewed as having a decent crop of younger partners, for many, Barter (pictured) is up there with Chris Hale as the driving force of the buy-out team. Barter's record was underlined by a strong run of deals, taking management roles on major bids such as Saga's £6.15bn merger with the Automobile Association (AA) and on the £1.02bn buy-out of The Tussauds Group. For sponsor roles, Barter was one of the most prolific deal-doers at the quality mid-market level, a record underlined by his lead role for Bridgepoint on the £360m acquisition of Fat Face.

But his real legacy must be overseeing the major strides made by Travers' buy-out team over the last five years until handing over the team captain role to Phil Sanderson. It is not that long ago that some critics would have written off Travers as a quality outfit but one that lacked bite and was set to be squeezed downwards. As it happened, the firm defied critics to improve its market position despite the growing band of Johnny-come-latelies targeting private equity.

While it is never great to lose a good lawyer, for Travers there is the obvious chance to cement the relationship with Bridgepoint. Here much attention will focus on how Barter will divvy up the work given that Clifford Chance (CC) has recently been winning more Bridgepoint business. One rival partner said the loss of Barter as a deal-doer will also be blunted as he had began to express an interest in moving away from the coalface (Barter was unavailable for comment for this article).

A home in-house?

But the wider interest will focus on the scope for other senior deal lawyers to move in-house. There has been much talk of such a possibility given the recent emergence of in-house teams in private equity. Such expectations have been further fuelled by the mounting regulatory burden on the industry as the deals and financing terms get larger and more complex. So far there have only been a few examples of the trend becoming reality with Weil Gotshal & Manges' Alison Hampton moving to become general counsel at HgCaptial.

So while a handful of legal teams, like Tim Pryce's at Terra Firma, are cited as being very involved in deal-making, in many cases the compliance/regulatory dimension of the job is not an obvious cultural fit for deal-junkie partners.

But if the role was to become more central to houses' commercial activity the draw would be considerable. It is possible to imagine a whole generation of senior deal lawyers N the Geffens, Laytons and Murray-Joneses of this world N being interested in such roles a few years down the line once they tire of deal-lawyering.

Still, despite the move this year of Kirkland & Ellis' Raymond McKeeve to an investment role with Robert Tchenguiz, there still seems limited scope for many to follow in the pioneering steps of Ian Sellars' successful move from CC to Permira. As one partner opines: "We're just not that good with numbers."

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