Earlier this month, the government launched the fund as part of a wider drive to address challenges through research funding agency UK Research and Innovation and its Innovate UK arm. It is the latest development in the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund which focuses on improving UK science and business innovation.

As part of this, AI and the data economy is one of the strategy’s four ‘Grand Challenges’: the AI and data challenge is focused on legal services, accountancy and insurance because they are high-value and data-driven.

The £20m is open to both legal tech companies and law firms, and split into a £4m research programme aimed at solving technological challenges in legal services and a £16m programme designed to support research and development in businesses.

In addition, smaller projects can get up £400,000 in funding for more specific developments within a single business, which could include developing new AI driven products within law firms.

Alex Smith, innovation hub manager at Reed Smith, welcomes the initiative, saying: ‘Research and development is under-funded and under-thought in the legal tech space. If it’s about how AI can fix the legal ecosystem rather than how we can make money out of commercial law, then it’s a good thing.’

Smith believes innovation in the legal industry does not require a close proximity to law, adding: ‘People say “the Government doesn’t understand what lawyers need”, but they can do it. If you have the right people, structures and professionals, it won’t be a problem. Legal doesn’t even know what its needs are.’

As part of the programme, a series of briefing events are being held throughout the UK in June, covering London, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.

The fund is an alternative to some of the accelerator and incubator style models at law firms, such as Mishcon De Reya’s MDR LAB or Allen & Overy’s Fuse.

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The Magic Circle firm announced today (21 May) its lawyers will be able to practise local law in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) through a joint operations agreement with local firm Zhao Sheng. FTZ rules allow international players to tie-up with domestic firms and practise local law.

The announcement has been on the cards for some time after the two firms formed a ‘best friends’ alliance in April last year, which saw three partners and 16 lawyers move from Linklaters to Zhao Sheng.

‘Market shifts indicate that outbound work and high-end domestic transactions will become ever more important for our business,’ said Linklaters head of China William Liu. ‘The joint operations will help us to protect our competitive advantage both in China and globally.’

Other firms to have entered the FTZ include Hogan Lovells, through its association with Fidelity Law in October 2016 and Baker McKenzie, which a year earlier became the first international firm to launch a joint office in the area with Beijing firm FenXun Partners. Holman Fenwick Willan, meanwhile, formalised a local partnership with Wintell & Co in April 2016.

The move follows CMS announcing last Friday (18 May) it had formed an alliance with Hong Kong firm Shirley Lau & Co, again with a view to practice local law.

CMS partner Tim Elliott will move across to the newly established firm to become its office managing director alongside three other lawyers. The firm was launched by former Troutman Sanders M&A veteran partner Shirley Lau, who brought a six-strong corporate and litigation team with him from the US firm’s local operations.

CMS Hong Kong managing partner Nicolas Wiegand said: ‘Since our launch in 2016, we have been steadily growing the team and developing our practice in a number of strategic areas including dispute resolution, particularly international arbitration, banking and finance, as well as energy.’

Hong Kong made legal headlines recently as the location of Slaughter and May’s third ever lateral hire. In April, the Magic Circle firm recruited former Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission director of enforcement Wynne Mok to its investigations and litigation team.

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Trowers & Hamlins, Devonshires and Mills & Reeve will also be in the roster of firms advising the government body, announced 18 May, for a four-year term.

The RSH started life in January, when the Homes and Communities Agency branched into a development and regulatory entity as the government tried to expedite the delivery of affordable housing.

The new entity, Homes England, will work on the delivery side, while the RSH will assist on commercial law and regulation, as well as a new special administration regime for social housing providers.

Under the new regime, if a registered provider is insolvent the administrator will try to keep its assets for use in the social housing sector.

Fieldfisher and Devonshires will advise specifically on regulatory, corporate and financial law, while CMS and NRF will work on insolvency and special administration law, with the other firms on the panel advising on both.

‘As a firm, we have extensive experience of advising on special administrations and in the social housing sector, and we look forward to deploying this in helping RSH,’ said CMS’ Glen Flannery, member of Restructuring Team of the Year at the latest Legal Business Awards. The firm’s real estate partner Candice Blackwood will also be part of the team advising the RSH.

This is the second panel appointment this week for Fieldfisher, which was among a group of seven firms appointed by Co-Op on Monday (14 May) to work alongside primary advised Allen & Overy.

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The online contracting tool, called Swiftagree, is the firm’s first technology product launch following its April merger, and is said to precede a number of other offerings it will launch this year. BCLP partner Barry Gross and the firm’s legal technologist Bruce Braude developed the concept.

Swiftagree aims aim to increase the efficiency of contract procedures by ensuring parties need only agree on negotiable points of a contract before finalising the negotiation through the platform. It is focused on English law contracts, though is expected to scale to contracts governed by US law.

The firm claim the start-up will ensure a contract is unbiased, and reduce the adversarial nature of traditional contract negotiations as only a few key terms are up for negotiation. The cost is unspecified for broader agreements, but an NDA is £5.

Braude commented on the launch: ‘Swiftagree combines legal and technology trends to create a proposition that delivers material benefits to clients. We believe there is significant potential to further broaden its application and technology capabilities as we progress.’

The start-up will be based internally with a team working within the firm, however external assistance has been given by Surely Group, a provider of technology platforms. Gross believes developing the start-up differs from incubation models seen at other firms, which focus on including third party companies within a law firm’s space.

Gross told Legal Business the firm had been working on the tool for months: ‘This a home-grown BCLP concept. As is always the case with software development, it takes a bit of time.’

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From July 2018, new joiners to the firm will benefit from an additional £2,000 to their maintenance account – a 25% increase from the £8,000 trainees from previous cohorts were given to cover living expenses.

Those receiving the increased sum will have to complete an accelerated version of the LPC at The University of Law and conclude the course in seven months.

Kirkland & Ellis now joins large firms including Allen & Overy, Hogan Lovells and Slaughter and May who similarly boosted their LPC grant to five figures earlier this year.

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Recent big-ticket deals characterising the market include US tech private equity player Silver Lake’s proposed £2.2bn buyout of ZPG – the parent company of UK property site Zoopla – Cinven’s disposal of its Ufinet Spanish fibre-optic business and the $816m London listing of Avast, the Prague-headquartered cybersecurity heavyweight.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer celebrated a double victory, cropping up on both the Cinven disposal and the ZPG deal. The team, led by partners Adrian Maguire, Victoria Sigeti, Armando Albarrán and Javier Monzón, advised long-standing client Cinven on a deal which saw the private equity firm’s fifth fund sell Ufinet Spain, its Spanish fibre network operator, to a consortium led by Paris-headquartered infrastructure investor Antin Infrastructure Partners.

Herbert Smith Freehills advised Antin with a team lead by Madrid-based corporate partner Pablo García-Nieto, with support from UK-based partner Heather Culshaw. A Madrid-based Clifford Chance team advised the Cinven management. The deal also sees Cinven’s fifth fund sell Ulfinet International, the Latin American operations, to the sixth Cinven fund.

Ufinet provides fibre infrastructure and transmission services to telecom operators in Spain and international markets, with a fibre network spanning more than 66,800 kilometres across two continents. Cinven had acquired Ufinet in June 2014 from Gas Natural Fenosa (GNF), the largest integrated gas and electricity provider in Spain, for €510 million.

Freshfields also won a high-profile mandate advising ZPG plc, the target of Silver Lake’s proposed £2.2bn buyout, with a team led by partners Mark Austin and Piers Prichard Jones. Partners Alice Greenwell and Rod Carlton advised on employment and competition matters respectively.

The deal renews an existing relationship, after the Magic Circle firm advised ZPG on its 2014 initial public offering (IPO). Silver Lake was advised by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, with a team led by M&A partner and Freshfields alumni Ben Spiers, also featuring London partner Clare Gaskell and New York-based partner Michael Wolfson.

Proskauer Rose partner Liam Arthur advised Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, which is taking a minority stake in the company. Corporate partner Iain Wagstaff at Linklaters advised Canadian pension fund PSP Investments, which is also taking a minority share.

The acquisition – done through a scheme of arrangements which are subject to customary conditions including FCA and European Commission approval – is set to close in the next few months.

ZPG owns and operates UK property brands including Zoopla, uSwitch, Money, PrimeLocation and SmartNewHomes, as well as supplying property data and software providers with products including Hometrack, Calcasa, TechnicWeb, Ravensworth, Alto, Jupix, ExpertAgent, PropertyFile and MoveIT.

White & Case meanwhile has scored a repeat mandate to advise Avast on its premium listing on the London Stock Exchange, a tech float valued at US$816.6 million.

The team was co-led by London partners Ian Bagshaw, Jonathan Parry and Jill Concannon and also included partners Guy Potel, Steven Worthington, Prabhu Narasimhan, Justin Wagstaff and Prague-based partner Jan Andrusko.

The offer, which priced at 250 pence per share, includes gross primary proceeds of around US$200 million and represents 25.3% of the shares in Avast. The mandate is the result of a long-standing relationship, Bagshaw having also led the White & Case team which advised Avast on its $1.3bn acquisition of AVG Technologies in 2016.

In a double win for US high-flyers in the City, Latham & Watkins is advising the underwriters with a team led by London corporate and capital markets partners James Inness and Brett Cassidy.

White & Case’s Parry told Legal Business: ‘Two US heritage firms on a premium London listing of this size is something of a watershed. There is no longer an automatic default to the Magic Circle. The deal is a real endorsement of London as an attractive destination for big tech IPOs. That this IPO launched successfully in such a choppy market is a real achievement for Avast.’

Bagshaw said: ‘Our relationship with Avast has gone from strength-to-strength in recent years. We advised the company on a number of key transactions, including its US$1.3bn acquisition of AVG, the initial private equity investment by Summit Partners in 2010, the minority investment by CVC Capital Partners in 2014 and its recent acquisition of Piriform. Advising Avast on a London IPO of this magnitude and strategic significance has been hugely exciting.’

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The firm announced today (14 May) that Allen & Overy’s (A&O) global head of IP Nicola Dagg has quit the firm to join the London office of the newly-crowned world’s largest grossing firm.

The well-regarded litigator will leave A&O after 12 years. Her practice focuses on patent litigation and breach of confidence disputes, particularly in technologically advanced matters.

Kirkland’s chairman Jeffrey Hammes said her experience ‘is quite complementary to our existing practice and will be particularly useful to our life sciences and technology clients as they defend their intellectual property around the world’.

Her hire comes within months of two headline laterals for Kirkland, which in March surged past Latham to become the world’s top-billing law firm.

In December last year the firm announced the hire of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer private equity star David Higgins in a landmark $10m deal, while in January this year it tapped Cravath for New York M&A playmaker Eric Schiele.

City laterals outside the transactional arena have been rarer for the US giant, although in 2015 it tapped Linklaters for UK competition chief Paula Riedel.

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Newly-appointed firms Fieldfisher and Squire Patton Boggs join Addleshaw Goddard, Pinsent Masons, Hill Dickinson, Brodies and Paris Smith for a three-year term, following a review which began last year.

The group’s head of legal operations, Helen Lowe, and head of legal and digital Peter Horsfall, led the review with procurement manager Peter McHugh. TLT and Weightmans had both previously held panel spots with the group.

A Co-op spokesperson said: ‘Following an extensive panel review, the Co-op has appointed seven law firms with a wide range of specialist knowledge and legal expertise in the areas of commercial, litigation, property and corporate matters to support its in-house legal team. They join A&O, the incumbent City firm.’

The group has five core businesses in the food, electrical, insurance, funeral care and legal services sectors, spread across 3,750 outlets. It began reviewing its panels last year around the time former Dixons Carphone group general counsel (GC) Helen Grantham replaced Alistair Asher in the top legal role. Asher, a former A&O partner, moved into a new role as director of special projects for the business.

Asher first got involved with the Co-op in spring 2013, when he was drafted in to help with the bank’s £1.5bn capital shortfall.

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