Legal Business Magazine

If work is winding down, you've sorted your Xmas shopping, and fancy a bit of light reading instead of present wrapping/more work emails, we've got you sorted - here are our top features, interview and quotes of 2024. 💡 From transatlantic mergers to dizzying new heights of competition in the war for talent, 2024 has been a memorable year - here are our 20 most-read features, starring firms including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, Kirkland & Ellis and Baker McKenzie, and well as our debut Private Equity Elite, which revealed the top general counsel in PE. https://lnkd.in/e9hy_kXV 🗣️ From high-profile managing partners to leading GCs and barristers, this year the LB team interviewed dozens of big names, including Richard Youle, Wim Dejonghe and Babett Carrier, about everything from mental health to mergers, and why The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe holds key lessons for every City lawyer. Here are our most popular interviews of the year: https://lnkd.in/e_3KShsS ✂️ And talking to lawyers all year round has meant there's been plenty of quotes that had to be spiked - so as a Christmas treat, here's a selection of some of our favourites, include one partner on why $20m isn't actually that much, once you deduct the essentials like 'a mansion or two, a flashy car, and a lifestyle that requires a lot of upkeep'. https://lnkd.in/ew9y6Gpc Thanks to all of our readers from the team (pictured here in our standard day-to-day attire at this year's LB Awards) - see you in 2025 for lots more!

While I was watching some amazing carols yesterday, team Legal Business Magazine signed off 2024 with a bumper crop of our highlights of the year. It’s the Christmas gift you’ve all been waiting for….all of our most popular features and interviews, just when you have plenty of time to read at your leisure! Not to mention some great quotes about what partners really think of the biggest stories in the market (when their names aren’t attached) from Elisha Juttla . Anna Huntley, Alex Ryan, Ben Wheway, Tom Cox, Elisha and I will be back in the New Year with plenty more great stories for you. Thanks also to our wonderful regular Legal 500 contributors Cameron Purse, Bethany Burns, Edgar Tate, Amy Ulliott and Isabel Caine . Enjoy the holiday season! https://lnkd.in/e5jncFbF https://lnkd.in/e9nSFKvT https://lnkd.in/e5mPqsQn

The Litigation Funding Rankings are now live! It was a pleasure to speak to so many of this year’s market leaders for the feature. https://lnkd.in/eU2_QWMn

Whether it’s revenue, partner profits, headcount or law firm rankings, there’s no shortage of metrics to choose from to rate law firms. But what's less immediately available is data on how clients rate the service they get from law firms. Over recent years, Legal 500 has been asking hundreds of thousands of clients how strongly they would recommend the firms they use to others. We’ve used this data to calculate a Net Promoter Score - a market research metric devised by Bain & Co - for every firm, meaning we can re-order firms by a completely new metric: how enthusiastically their clients recommend them. Of Legal Business Magazine's Global 100, Slaughter and May is the highest rated UK firm, but there are 35 other firms from around the world with higher scores ('...And You Won't Believe Who They Are', goes the clickbait headline I decided not to use). The top five UK heritage firms are listed below, and for Legal Business subscribers, the full run-down of Global 100 scores is in this article: https://lnkd.in/ebUPiwZh If you'd like to find out more, please do drop me a line.

While this year’s LB100 has found transatlantic law firms experiencing slower revenue growth than their more geographically focused peers, an analysis of five years of data has highlighted how large-scale UK-US mergers are driving up profitability at a much steeper rate. Between 2019 and 2024, the LB100 firms which are the product of major transatlantic tie-ups – including Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose Fulbright, DLA Piper, Eversheds Sutherland – increased their partner profits by an average of 69% That is significantly above the average PEP increase of 35% for all LB100 firms over that same period. DLA and Hogan Lovells are two of three LB100 firms (alongside Ashfords) to have seen triple-digit PEP growth over five years, with TLT LLP and Clarke Willmott rounding out the top five for steepest PEP hikes since 2019. https://lnkd.in/e3NUaSWq

Back in 2018, Therese Pritchard and Lisa Mayhew – then the freshly appointed co-chairs of BCLP – sat down with Legal Business to talk about the $900m, 1,600 lawyer union - the first significant financially integrated transatlantic merger in more than a decade. While LB warned that it would take more than just some ‘warm fuzzies from the troops’ to turn the deal into a success, the pair were confident that the tie-up would not underwhelm, with areas like London corporate earmarked for growth. Almost seven years on, LB has taken a deep dive into the data and spoken to UK managing partner Jinal Shah and global senior partner Segun Osuntokun to assess whether those lofty ambitions have been realised. https://lnkd.in/eR7WvE9F

With news breaking this morning that UK private equity firm CBPE is taking a minority stake in HF (the law firm formerly known as Horwich Farrelly), this piece by Tom Cox looking at rising PE interest in the mid-market is looking particularly timely. Law firm leaders including Martin Arnold, Edward Whittington, Charles Leveque and Doug Williams give their take on what has been a strong year for the mid-tiers, while the piece also looks at some of the key issues facing mid-market law firms, from AI and tech to rising fees. Thanks also to Kate Francis and Fabrizio Carpanini at Dorsey & Whitney LLP, who took time out to discuss their lead role on the biggest PE buyout of a UK law firm to date - Inflexion's take-private of DWF last year - and what that deal tells us about the future prospects for PE investment in law, particularly in the mid-market. https://lnkd.in/g829RZ8B

The UK’s 100 largest law firms increased profit per equity partner (PEP) by an average of 13% during the last financial year, with near across-the-board hikes coming despite the rising costs of associate salaries. A total of 66 LB100 firms recorded increases in PEP this year, and of those, 40 recorded double-digit percentage increases, with one firm - Kingsley Napley - even managing a triple-digit increase. While Slaughter and May does not formally disclose its financial results, it is understood that the firm’s PEP now sits at £4m after a 14% increase in 2023-24. It is the only firm in the LB100 with PEP above £3m, with a further six reporting PEP above £2m and a further nine above £1m. Alex Ryan has all the details - check out the full article to find out more. https://lnkd.in/eAq2niYF

‘Firms vary in their approach to entrepreneurialism. I didn’t fully realise how challenging it is to build your client base and I’ve often felt quite lost. My friends who are lawyers in the City have all had different experiences. Knowing how to market yourself in the beginning can be really hard.’ Making the leap from associate to partner is no easy feat. It’s no longer just about doing the work – it’s also about winning business and building a client base. So how do you go about making the transition? As one partner jokes: 'If anyone had all the right answers, they’d be getting all the work in the City’ - but there is of course plenty of advice out there from the people who have made it. For this feature, Elisha Juttla spoke with partners of all levels of seniority, from juniors through to managing partners, from firms including Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, Clifford Chance, White & Case LLP, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates, Vinson & Elkins, Sidley Austin LLP, Covington & Burling LLP, to find out what they’ve learned along the way. https://lnkd.in/ezup_T6H