In its entry for this category, Weil Gotshal & Manges states confidently that the "Mike Francies Show label has now finally disappeared".

As one of the City's best known M&A lawyers, Francies was for some years dogged with accusations that colleagues at the US firm's London office struggled to emerge from his shadow.

This charge is belied by the quality of the partners that have emerged from within the London office, including Jacky Kelly, Sarah Priestley, Michael Nicklin and, most recently, Joanne Etherton, who was made a partner in January 2009.

At the same time Francies has secured a procession of senior lateral hires, including Peter King, who joined from Shearman & Sterling last year, and Tony Horspool, who arrived from Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft. Indeed, after a decade at the firm, 2009 provided Francies with the opportunity to demonstrate both his and the office's versatility as it got stuck into a stream of high-profile restructuring mandates, including those relating to Lehman and General Motors.

"The range of restructuring matters that an office of around 100 lawyers, many of whom had previously been advising almost exclusively on private equity mandates, can support would have been severely limited without the strategic decision of Mike and the senior management team to ensure cross-disciplinary lawyering," says the entry. "This necessitated adopting a different way of looking at clients' needs and ensuring that all lawyers, regardless of their background, could understand the commercial realities of distressed transactions and get the job done."

Independent evidence that this commercial success is supported by a strong culture came in the summer when the office came first in Legal Week's employment satisfaction survey.

Francies underlines his personal commitment to the firm's busy corporate social responsibility programme by mentoring a student from Harris Academy in Bermondsey, who he meets most weeks. He also co-ordinates the firm's global membership of the Private Equity Foundation.