Ashurst Crowned Law Firm of the Year as DWF's Leaitherland Honoured at The British Legal Awards 2019
White & Case, Gateley, Taylor Wessing and Pinsent Masons were also among the night's big winners.
November 22, 2019 at 03:00 AM
3 minute read
The British Legal Awards
Ashurst, White & Case and Gateley were among the law firms winning the top awards at The British Legal Awards on Thursday night, which celebrated the legal sector's finest achievements of the past year.
Ashurst saw off strong competition from an elite line-up of nominees, including Kirkland & Ellis and Travers Smith, to be crowned this year's Law Firm of the Year, with judges hailing the firm's soaring revenues, international growth and recent reinvigoration.
The ceremony, hosted by comedian Jo Brand, also saw DWF's group CEO Andrew Leaitherland pick up the award for excellence in leadership. He fought off competition from Ashurst's Paul Jenkins, Fieldfisher's Michael Chissick and CMS's Penelope Warne to take home the top prize.
The prestigious honour of U.K. Law Firm of the Year went to Gateley, which topped a hotly contested shortlist that also featured DAC Beachcroft and Shoosmiths among several others.
Taylor Wessing and Pinsent Masons were also among the night's big winners, taking home three awards apiece. Taylor Wessing was awarded in the innovation, M&A and transactional private equity categories, while Pinsents topped the groups vying for the property, competition and regulation, and TMT awards.
Another standout performance came from White & Case, which took home two awards: International Law Firm of the Year, and Equity Capital Markets Team of the Year.
Other individuals who stood out on the night included Allen & Overy's MaameYaa Kwafo-Akoto and King & Spalding's Krishna Omkar who jointly received the rising star award for private practice.
Outside of private practice, BT came out top in two legal department award categories: commerce, and TMT. Fellow telecommunications company Vodafone took home the award for in-house innovation while OakNorth collected the prize for financial services.
Magic Circle firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Clifford Chance picked up prizes for restructuring, and energy and infrastructure, respectively.
The two Legal Week awards were chosen by the Legal Week editorial team, with the Excellence in Leadership category put out to an industry vote.
The other awards were deliberated on by a senior independent judging panel that included Slaughter and May senior consultant Nigel Boardman; former Ashurst banking partner Mark Vickers; Jeremy Barton, the general counsel of KPMG; Dame Janet Gaymer, former civil service commissioner and senior partner at Simmons & Simmons; and former co-CEO of Herbert Smith Freehills, Sonya Leydecker.
The panel was chaired by Ed Sparrow, chairman of the City of London Law Society and a partner at Ashurst.
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