1. Daily Telegraph blocked from naming businessman who ‘sexually harassed staff’ [via Sky News]

2. UN rules that Muslim veil ban ‘violates human rights’ [via The Week]

3. Tracy Chapman sues Nicki Minaj over unauthorised sample [via The Guardian]

4. Amazon opens pop-up fashion shop in central London [via The Guardian]

5. Dyson chooses Singapore for new electric car plant [via BBC News]

Thomson Reuters is accepting applications for its first dedicated legal tech incubator until the end of this month, with further details expected to be announced in December. The company is shifting its focus towards legal tech, having also hosted a fintech incubator in Zurich, following the sale its financial risk business earlier this year.

The programme is interested in working with more mature start-ups who have successfully secured significant funding, with Thomson Reuters not seeking any equity in return for access. The initial duration is likely to be a minimum of three months, but can run longer depending on the success. Start-ups will not have to take residence in Zurich as the incubator can run virtually.

The company will also vet out any start-ups considered direct competitors, and believes the company’s tech clout will be a unique attraction for potential cohort members.

‘We have the advantage of knowing what it takes to sell technology into legal,’ Thomson Reuter’s customer proposition lead Jim Leason told Legal Business. ‘Law firms are the buyers of technology whereas we are the creators of it.’

Meanwhile, Slaughters’ highly-symbolic legal tech incubator, which it confirmed in June, is now expected to launch as early as the first quarter of next year.

The incubator, which will sit alongside Slaughters’ existing Fast Forward fintech incubator, mirrors moves from Magic Circle counterpart Allen & Overy, which has its own space called Fuse. Mishcon De Reya and Dentons also have similar ventures, while banking giant Barclays this year entered the legal tech space through its Eagle Labs programme.

A leading start-up’s co-founder told Legal Business Slaughters’ foray into legal tech was an exciting development for start-ups, citing potential exposure to Slaughters’ premium corporate client list. Meanwhile for Slaughters – typically viewed as conservative – the move will further its tech credentials, with the firm also having one of the sector’s leading equity stakes courtesy of a 5% share in AI platform Luminance.

Accelerating development of legal tech incubator programmes come as an increasing amount of money finds its way into the start-up market, with Kira, Legatics, Eigen Technologies and Apperio among the companies winning significant funding in recent months.

Overall interest in legal tech is booming, with about 2,000 people attending yesterday’s (17 October) Legal Geek conference as companies and firms alike look to gain a long-term advantage over their competitors.

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1. WPP in talks to buy FT’s London HQ in £90m-plus deal [via The Guardian]

2. Son sues over mum’s airing cupboard death in Pennal resort [via BBC News]

3. Apple secures ‘critical’ iPhone tech in $600m deal with UK-based firm [via The Week]

4. Data gathering ‘may deny rape victims access to justice’ [via The Guardian]

5. Ladbible rescues Unilad – with 200 jobs saved [via Sky News]

6. Transgender law reform has overlooked women’s rights, say MPs [via The Guardian]

7. Sainsbury’s-Asda inquiry to examine sale of petrol, toys and kids’ clothes [via The Guardian]

8. Audi fined £700m for dieselgate gains and oversight failings [via Sky News]

Rookies at the City law firm will see their pay jump from a solid £76,000 to an impressive £82,000.

London managing partner Simon Beddow (who was given a special shout out in Ashurst’s Lex 100 verdict this year) said: “We had a very strong start to the financial year and this has continued through September. This, together with the desire to remain as competitive as possible, led us to undertake a review of salary and in consequence we have made a number of changes which will take effect at the firm’s half year on 1 November.”

Read more about Ashurst here.

The drilling merger – an all-stock deal and a court-sanctioned scheme of arrangements – will see the shareholders of Ensco and Rowan own 60.5% and 39.5% respectively of the combined business.

Kirkland & Ellis clinched a significant win in UK plc land in advising Rowan with a team including City partners David Higgins, David Holdsworth and Dipak Bhundia. The deal was led out of Houston by corporate partners Sean Wheeler and Doug Bacon and included Dallas partner Ryan Gorsche and New York-based executive compensation partner Scott Price and tax partners David Wheat, Lane Morgan and Mike Carew.

Latham & Watkins is advising Rowan on antitrust aspects, with a team including corporate partner Michael Egge in Washington, Brussels managing partner Lars Kjolbye, and London partner Jonathan Parker.

Meanwhile, Slaughters is acting for Ensco with a team led by corporate partners Hywel Davies and Christian Boney and including partners William Turtle (competition), Jonathan Fenn (pensions) and Mike Lane (tax).

Elsewhere, a Legal & General deal on Monday (8 October) saw the UK insurer complete a £2.4bn buyout of pensions relating to the now-defunct telecoms equipment provider Nortel.

The buy-out relates to around 15,500 pensioner members and around 7,200 deferred members of the pension scheme, which entered a Pension Protection Fund (PPF) assessment after Nortel went into administration in 2009, pending litigation and insolvency proceedings.

The Travers team advising the trustees was led by Dan Naylor and Susie Daykin and also included partner Peter Hughes. Advising Legal & General was an Eversheds team led by Hugo Laing.

Naylor told Legal Business that the deal represented the biggest ever PPF plus arrangement, in which the pension scheme members receive more options, via a member option exercise, and better benefits than the PPF compensation would have offered. A further transaction is likely to follow as more recoveries are made.

The deal is also the second biggest pension buyout ever, after the £2.5bn transaction with Legal & General relating to pensions of US-headquartered automotive supplier TRW in 2014.

Hughes and Naylor, the latter then an associate, were also part of the team advising the trustees of the TRW Pension Scheme, while Laing, then an associate at Clifford Chance, was part of the team advising Legal & General on that deal.

Another major deal this week saw Kirkland, Latham and Allen & Overy score key roles on the sale of shareholdings in fin-tech company FNZ to Canadian pension fund La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and private equity investor Generation Investment Management.

The deal sees Kirkland advise the sellers, FNZ and funds advised by HIG Capital and General Atlantic, led by London corporate partners Gavin Gordon, Carl Bradshaw and Tom McCarthy. A Latham team led by Michael Bond advised CDPQ and Jonathan Wood at Weil Gotschal & Manges advised Generation. Karan Dinamani at Allen & Overy advised the CEO of FNZ.

The acquisition is the first investment by CDPQ-Generation, the sustainable equity joint venture launched by CDPQ and Generation. Kirkland has a nine-year relationship with FNZ, having advised on HIG Capital’s initial investment in 2009, General Atlantic’s investment in 2012 and FNZ’s recently announced deal to acquire European Bank for Financial Services (ebase) from comdirect bank.

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1. Ashers ‘gay cake’ row: Bakers win Supreme Court appeal [via BBC News]

2. HSBC in $765m settlement with US Department of Justice [via BBC News]

3. Convicted former UBS trader to be freed from UK immigration centre [via The Guardian]

4. Patisserie Valerie parent suspends share trading amid fraud probe [via Sky News]

5. Supreme Court rules hospital negligent over misleading waiting time [via The Law Society Gazette]

The initiative responds to challenges faced by legal professionals with overkill setting in as unconnected products flood the market, forcing lawyers to upload client information and documents on a new platform each time the firm adopts a new tool.

It sees CC’s chief information officer Paul Greenwood and Latham’s Ken Heaps chair a group which will meet monthly to advise newly launched startup Reynen Court on the development of a platform where different tech vendors will be able to sell their products.

The consortium aims at steering the project towards products law firms really need, while also setting common standards for the development of new tools. The ambition is to give firms and vendors a one-stop shop for legal tech, a move which if successful might lead to much-needed consolidation in the sector.

The group also includes the IT heads of US firms Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, Covington & Burling, Cravath Swaine & Moore, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, Ropes & Gray, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom and White & Case.

‘There is a lot of very interesting new legal tech tools coming out every week, but many law firms are not getting the full value because all of these apps use different platforms and they don’t interact with each other,’ Greenwood told Legal Business. ‘It means every time you use a different product you have to upload client documents on it. Reynen Court will engineer this so that vendors will put all their products on a single platform and each law firm will be able to keep its documents on its own premises or cloud.’

Founded and led by former Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate Andrew Klein, Reynen Court employs around a dozen people and aims to go live with a first group of ten vendors selling their products on its platform within 12 months.

The initial focus will be on contract analysis, discovery, compliance and practice management technologies.

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This is an innovative and exciting opportunity to meet the people who work at the firm in a setting which allows you to ask questions and get an idea of what is expected from a White & Case trainee.

If you would like to attend, please register your interest by submitting a short application via our website www.whitecasetrainee.com.

The application form will require a paragraph of no more than 200 words explaining why you would like to attend.

Dates and deadlines

York – 18 October 2018 (apply by 11 October 2018)

Nottingham – 30 October 2018 (apply by 23 October 2018)

St Andrews – 1 November 2018 (apply by 25 October 2018)

Bristol – 8 November 2018 (apply by 1 November 2018)

Cambridge – 8 November 2018 (apply by 1 November 2018)

Oxford – 15 November 2018 (apply by 8 November 2018)

Warwick – 15 November 2018 (apply by 8 November 2018)

Manchester – 20 November 2018 (apply by 14 November 2018)

Exeter – 22 November 2018 (apply by 15 November 2018)

Durham – 29 November 2018 (apply by 22 November 2018)

The new business, launched today (3 October), will be headed up by the firm’s director of learning and development, Chris O’Callaghan, and will initially focus on Middle Eastern, Asian and Australian clients.

O’Callaghan is currently the only permanent member of staff overseeing the new arm, but relevant partners or business services professionals will be pulled in to advise on certain client matters.

It will offer advice to clients on a broad range of issues, including training programme design, talent management, cyber security, executive coaching, team building, risk, benchmarking, public relations and reputation management.

The firm said it had been providing ad hoc consulting services to ‘several clients for more than a year’ and therefore the new business was simply formalising what it was already doing.

O’Callaghan told Legal Business: ‘It’s true that a lot of firms are looking at doing something like this at the moment, but for us this is the right opportunity to add value to the client relationships we have, particularly outside of Europe where the markets are more mature.’

HFW senior partner, Richard Crump, added: ‘Clients know that we understand their business and their sector, and trust us to provide commercial as well as legal advice. Broadening those relationships to include consulting services is a natural next step, and means that we are even better able to provide clients with the best and most commercially effective advice possible.’

With the launch, HFW has become the latest firm to move into non-legal business, with City outfit Mishcon de Reya announcing last month it had created a brand management arm.

The new business, which Mishcon claimed was the first of its kind to be launched by a ‘leading’ UK law firm, offers advice on brand licensing, IP strategy and reputation management.

To lead the new arm, Mishcon hired Daniel Avener, formerly the chief executive of brand management group CAA/GBG.

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WSHB is much smaller than DWF, with revenue of just $81m and 56 partners across 22 offices in the US, but DWF managing partner and chief executive Andrew Leaitherland says the firms have a number of mutual clients, particularly international insurance businesses.

‘This is a significant move for us which greatly expands our reach in the US,’ he commented. ‘In particular, we both have strong insurance practices and already support some of the world’s largest insurers.’

The top 25 UK law firm added 18% to its top line in the year to 30 April, for revenue of £236m. It did not disclose profit per equity partner (PEP) but this year’s LB100 estimates it rose 9% to £327,000.

In June, DWF confirmed it was considering what would become the largest UK law firm initial public offering (IPO) yet. Its recent history has been marked by a spate of office openings in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, as well as the acquisitions of legal cost business NeoLaw last June and claims management firm Triton Global.

Leaitherland said DWF had been working on its US growth strategy for some time: ‘We have opened offices or sought association partners where it makes sense strategically and where our clients operate and tell us they need our support.’

Alongside WSHB’s insurance business, the firm provides services in construction, real estate, professional liability, commercial and employment law. It was founded in 1997.

WSHB co-founder and chairman Daniel Berman said the DWF partnership would allow the firm to tap into DWF’s international network and access its Connected Services business: a division of independent businesses which help clients manage risk, reputation, cost, time and resources.

‘Our national platform now provides legal services in almost every state and in the past several years we have recorded double-digit growth of both revenue and lawyers,’ he commented. ‘This will allow us to provide our clients with multidisciplinary teams across different professional and business services in an integrated way.’

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