Rich is The Lawyer’s deputy editor. He has a particular focus on firms outside the UK top 50.
He was previously editor of The Lawyer’s student publication Lawyer 2B, and as such also has an interest everything to do with legal education, training contracts and pupillage, as well as lawyers’ ongoing career development.
If you haven’t got a head of sustainability, you’re increasingly in the minority. For the last three years, law firms have been jumping on this trend: since 2021, no fewer than 27 firms have appointed a sustainability or ESG leader. Looking at where all these green gurus have come from is an interesting exercise in […]
Do you WhatsApp your clients? It’s a more divisive question than you might expect. According to a recent poll of conducted by The Lawyer on LinkedIn, while 66 per cent of fee-earners don’t use the messaging service for this purpose, 34 per cent do. And it’s not split along seniority lines: partners, associates, trainees and […]
West Midlands: Everyone’s all about the wellbeing now, but some aspects of it are harder to crack than others – not least, the increasing prevalence of technology in our lives. Lawyers in particular are often desk-bound or required to constantly check their smartphone, and work long into the night in front of a laptop. But […]
Solicitors at Hogan Lovells in Birmingham probably feel pretty happy with their lot. After all, they’re the best-paid bunch of lawyers in the Midlands, with NQs earning £75,000. That sort of money goes a long way in Brum, and knocks the salaries offered by local competitors like Fieldfisher (£65,000), Gowling WLG (£63,000) and Gateley (£55,000) […]
Hogan Lovells and CMS have the biggest salary gaps between London newly-qualified (NQ) solicitors and their counterparts in the regions. As law firms continue to grapple with pay scales across multiple locations in an era when remote working is common, the discrepancies are becoming increasingly obvious. The Lawyer understands regional associates at certain firms are […]
The smaller you are, the harder it is to grow – that’s a basic rule of the UK200 law firms. In most years, great hulking brutes like DLA Piper will put on millions in revenue, while tadpoles like Brachers or Morr & Co (who they?) struggle to eke out any organic growth at all. But […]
Personal injury and clinical negligence firm Simpson Millar made a pre-tax loss of £6.3m in the 2022 financial year, and is due to repay a £25m loan to its parent company Doorway Holdings in December 2023, its accounts on Companies House show. The firm’s turnover was £31.3m in 2022, up slightly from £29.9m; however it […]
The winner of The Lawyer Awards Pro Bono Initiative of the Year in 2023 was DARA, an astonishing collaboration between multiple law firms. We heard how it all works.
London: Lee & Thompson knows a thing or two about developing talent. The Fitzrovia-headquartered firm first shook hands with Harry Styles during his X Factor days when he was one-fifth of boyband One Direction and have remained his sole legal adviser since the group disbanded in 2016. Aside from providing legal advice related to touring, recording […]
The following is a list of mergers and acquisitions made by law firms since 2009. It is impossible to make such a list completely exhaustive but it contains the majority of mergers involving UK200 firms, as well as the major tie-ups between large firms in the United States of America. The UK200 rank and revenue […]
Merger negotiations between two firms of different sizes can be a tricky process. Here, a number of mid-tier managing partners give their view on how to win the hearts of potential smaller matches when on the acquisition trail.
Howes Percival? A decade ago, the answer would have been: in the doldrums. Six years of declining revenue at the Midlands firm – one of the ever-diminishing number with vaguely amusing names (RIP Moon Beever) – saw it exit the UK top 100 in 2009 and drop as low as 133rd place by 2014. But […]