Global London 2024: Back down to earth Rocket-fuelled expansion slows as US firm rethink the race for London When the going gets tough: Global London firms dig in as market reality bites Following years of super-charged recruitment, uncertain times have prompted greater prudence among the Global London firms, with growth across the group coming to a near standstill. But, as LB finds, savvy firms are positioning themselves for the market revival Paul Weiss and Kirkland: Market forces: Paul Weiss, Kirkland and the war for London talent Paul Weiss is attracting the kind of headlines once reserve ..read more

We are providing more options for you to access your copy of Legal Business. Please see below for links to a limited version followed by a complete version. The complete version is only accessible to subscribers. Please make sure you are logged into the site to see the link. Limited version Complete issue The post Access your pdf edition of LB magazine – issue 319 appeared first on Legal Business ..read more

Sponsored by Overview: When the going gets tough – Global London firms dig in as market reality bites Following years of super-charged recruitment, uncertain times have prompted greater prudence among the Global London firms, with growth across the group coming to a near standstill. But, as LB finds, savvy firms are positioning themselves for the market revival Paul Weiss and Kirkland: Market forces – Paul Weiss, Kirkland and the war for London talent Paul Weiss is attracting the kind of headlines once reserved for Kirkland as it cherry-picks big names from the breadth of the City’s elite. B ..read more

With worldwide M&A activity down 17% last year, hitting a decade low, according to data from Refinitiv, 2023 was always going to be a more challenging year for US firms in London. And across the board, growth slowed as firms bucked the ‘stack ‘em high’ trend of recent years, exercising an increasingly cautious approach to investment and recruitment in the capital. During 2023, total London lawyer headcount across the Global London group (see main table) increased by a mere 1.8%, a significant decrease from last year’s equivalent figure of 9% and far below the pre-pandemic era, which saw 1 ..read more

In the contest for the biggest legal story of the moment, the A&O Shearman merger may be more transformational for the firms involved, but it is fair to say it has not quite captured the imagination like Paul Weiss’s dramatic and audacious hiring spree in London. ‘The question is whether a firm can genuinely build an elite PE practice by lifting out the top guys from different shops,’ muses one US firm partner, on Paul Weiss’s bid to crack London. ‘The only other space where you see this sort of super high-value team move is in professional sports,’ another adds breathlessly, before quest ..read more

Eric Knai, Eversheds Sutherland: If you look back at 2023, we have had a very depressed M&A market other than in the energy sector. If you think about the two geopolitical events that have dominated 2023, the Ukraine war and the conflict in the Middle East towards the end of the year, those are both conflicts which are in oil and gas regions and which have impacted not only production but also supply chain. Why does that impact M&A, transactional work and projects in general? It has driven up interest rates as a result of the inflation that those crises have created. But my view is th ..read more

More than 150 of the City’s leading M&A partners, in-house counsel and representatives from corporates and financial institutions came together in mid-March to discuss the latest trends in M&A at the 2024 Legal Business Corporate and M&A Summit. The event, held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster and sponsored by Gibson Dunn, Datasite, Gate One, Jones Day, Moneypenny, Shieldpay, Stevens & Bolton and Slaughter and May, saw delegates talk through the life cycle of an M&A deal over the course of a single day. Gibson Dunn English and New York-qualified c ..read more

When I was 18 I left Vancouver to play ice hockey in university in Japan. That got me off on kind of an adventurous track. I grew up dreaming of nothing more than becoming a hockey player. When you try to do that in Canada, you work your way up through the junior leagues. And the junior leagues are tough. You leave home and you go live in a small town, and the hockey team is sort of the centre of life in those towns. You become a minor celebrity. But it’s tough. Not many people make it. There are three levels of junior hockey in Canada, and when you get to the very top level you can be classe ..read more

What inspired you to pursue a career in law, and how did you develop an interest in becoming an in-house lawyer? There are a lot of different elements that came together. One is that I was always interested in mediating when someone was arguing or helping out if I felt like people were not heard or being treated unfairly. What I realised is that I like to create win-win situations, not someone winning and someone losing, but really finding ways that everyone can benefit from the situation. When it comes to talking about the tech side, a lot of it was about me always being interested in new tr ..read more

Against a backdrop of global stressors from conflict to trade friction and drivers for change such as global warming and the emergence of AI, Latin America presents a complex socio-political mosaic, currently, impacting both investor confidence and legal service provision. From Argentina to Venezuela, the region has rarely seen so many elections or so much change. Here Legal 500 Latin America editor Tim Girven and Brazil editor Daniela Costa take a look at the politics framing the region’s legal markets. Argentina: back on the map? ‘Milei is a game changer,’ says Santiago Carregal, chair of A ..read more