Magic Circle giant Allen & Overy has released its spring 2017 trainee retention rate.
31 of the firm’s 38 spring cohort will stay on as newly qualified solicitors. 36 qualifying trainees applied for the coveted positions.
See how Allen & Overy compares to its rivals in our spring 2017 trainee retention comparison table.
Palo Alto trailblazer Cooley is the holder of shares worth more than $11.5m following the float of Snap on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.
Initial public offering (IPO) documents stated the firm’s partners and associates own, through the firm’s investment vehicle GC&H Investments, 239,800 shares of Class A stock in the tech company and 239,800 Class B stock.
After Snap’s float gave a closing price of $24 a share, Cooley’s stock is valued at $11.5m. The float of 200 million shares on Thursday gave SNAP an overall valuation of $28bn.
Tech-focused firms in the Silicon Valley market like Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Cooley have been known for taking equity in deference of fees in fast growth start-ups.
Snap was founded in 2011 by chief executive Evan Spiegel, who developed the picture messaging app Snapchat.
Cooley advised Snap on the IPO, while Boston firm Goodwin Procter won the mandate to advise the underwriters.
Cooley corporate and securities partner Eric Jensen led the advice for Snap. Cooley global co-head of capital markets David Peinsipp and partner Seth Gottlieb also advised on the deal.
Goodwin’s team was led by partners Richard Kline, An-Yen Hu and Anthony McCusker.
Snap’s San Francisco in-house team was led by general counsel Chris Handman and associate general counsel Atul Porwal. Handman, who was previously a litigation partner at Hogan Lovells until 2014, was revealed to receive $475,000 as his 2016 base salary in the IPO documents.
Snap also uses US law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson for legal advice, where Evan Spiegel’s father, John Spiegel, is a partner, although not the company’s legal adviser. The tech company paid Munger $305,000 in 2014, $50,000 in 2015 and $294,000 in 2016 respectively.
The float represents the biggest tech IPO since Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, which raised $25bn in 2014. While legal fees have not yet been revealed for Snap, Alibaba’s IPO netted advisers Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Sullivan & Cromwell $15.8m.
This article first appeared on The Lex 100‘s sister publication Legal Business.
National player Bond Dickinson is to expand its Scottish presence with a second office, in Edinburgh. The firm, which already has a presence in Aberdeen, will open an office with around two or three partners and up to 20 staff.
The Edinburgh office will be based in Princes Street in the city, with a particular focus on energy, financial institutions and real estate. Bond Dickinson’s Aberdeen office is focused on oil and gas.
Commenting on the launch, Jonathan Blair, managing partner at Bond Dickinson said: ‘We wanted a second office in Scotland to support our clients and Edinburgh was a natural choice, being at the heart of Scotland’s central belt.
Blair (pictured) added: ‘The firm’s growth strategy includes increasing our presence in both domestic and international markets where the opportunities to do more work for our clients exist. Our approach to growth and investment has always been in response to client demand. Over the past year we have heard from more and more clients that they are keen that we have an Edinburgh presence, so that we are on hand when they need us.’
Last year saw mid-market firm Bond Dickinson secure an exclusive alliance with full-service US firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice. The deal means that Womble Carlyle will refer all UK work to Bond Dickinson and vice versa.
In December 2014 Bond Dickinson entered into its first strategic alliance with German firm Redeker Sellner Dahs as part of a growing international strategy.
The firm saw both its turnover and profit per equity partner (PEP) dip by 3% for the financial year 2015/16.
Turnover stands at £104m, down from last year’s figure of £107m, while PEP is £275,000 compared to £284,000 for the financial year 2014/15. The firm said the figures are a result of investment in the business and people in order to be in the best position for long term growth.
This article first appeared on the website of Legal Business, Lex 100’s sister publication.
Macfarlanes, Hogan Lovells and Herbert Smith Freehills have become the latest firms to post their spring 2017 trainee retention rates.
Macfarlanes has announced it will be keeping 100% of its qualifiers with all six of the qualifying trainees staying on at the firm.
Hogan Lovells posted a 79% retention rate with 23 of its 29 qualifiers accepting offers to stay on at the firm as newly qualified solicitors.
Meanwhile, Herbert Smith Freehills will retain 77% of its spring qualifiers with 27 out of 35 trainees opting to stay with the firm.
See our spring 2017 trainee retention table to see how these firms compare.
The BBC has announced it will recruit more trainees following the success of the in-house training contract it launched in 2015. Four trainees will be recruited onto the scheme to start in September 2017 and four to start in September 2019.
Candidates for the in-house training contracts will need to be LPC graduates, making it ideal for those who are able to start immediately.
Trainees are likely to sit in Intellectual Property, Commercial Rights and Business Affairs and BBC Worldwide, as well as completing a contentious secondment at a private practice law firm.
First year trainees can expect to take home £28,000 rising to £32,000 in their second year.
The new training contracts will operate in addition to the trailblazer apprenticeship scheme currently offered by the BBC to school leavers in which they can expect to qualify as a solicitor within 6 years.
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) has revealed its trainee retention rates for spring 2017, with the firm holding on to 55% of its trainee cohort. 11 out of 20 trainees are to join BLP as newly-qualified (NQ) lawyers.
BLP partner and training principal Anthony Lennox told The Lex 100’s sister publication Legal Business: ‘We’d like to have been announcing a higher proportion of qualifiers. However, our NQs will continue to be a huge asset to our firm, across the teams that they will shortly qualifying into.’
Slaughter and May and Mayer Brown have retained 100% of their trainees, with Slaughter and May keeping all 25 trainees due to qualify in March 2017. Mayer Brown kept on four of four.
A spokesman at Slaughter and May told Legal Business: ‘Our consistently high retention rates demonstrate that the long-term future of the firm, as well as its distinctive culture and ethos, is in good hands.’
BLP is the sixth firm to announce its spring 2017 trainee retention rate. See our table of retention rates here.
A host of top firms have recently announced that, in addition to their London offering, they will begin to provide training contracts in other locations across the UK.
Training outside of London can bring with it countless benefits without having to compromise on high quality (often international) work and top-notch clients.
So where else could you expect train in the future?
Berwin Leighton Paisner recently announced it would recruit its first trainees in Manchester in September 2017.
Fieldfisher are to offer training contracts in their Birmingham office starting as early as this September.
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer started employing paralegal apprentices in their Manchester office in October 2017.
Of course, many other firms already offer training contracts in numerous locations across the UK. Irwin Mitchell, for example, takes on trainees in Birmingham, Bristol (PLS only), Cambridge (PLS only), Chichester, Gatwick, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newbury, Newcastle (PLS only), Sheffield and Southampton. That’s a whopping 10 locations!
It seems inevitable that other firms will follow suit if they want to thrive in this competitive legal market so watch this space!
Fieldfisher is to start offering training contracts in the UK’s second largest city.
The European firm is looking for one to two trainees to start work in its Birmingham office as early as September 2017. Applications close on 15 April 2017.
Current Fieldfisher trainees love the firm’s’ good reputation and breadth of clients’, its ‘smaller intake of trainees’ and the ‘balance of being professional but not taking things too seriously’.
Other Fieldfisher office locations include Paris, Hamburg, Manchester, Rome, Silicon Valley and Shanghai.
See Fieldfisher’s full Lex 100 profile here.
The president of the UK Supreme Court has said that media coverage of judges during the Brexit legal challenge was unfair.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Lord Neuberger said that unjustified attacks on the judiciary undermined the rule of law. Although he did not target any specific publication or publication, one headline which stood out was The Daily Mail’s ‘enemies of the people’ in relation to three of the country’s most senior judges after the government lost the Article 50 case in November 2016.
Judges do not generally feel that they can or should respond to this type of criticism publicly and the story led to criticism of politicians for not standing up for the UK’s independent judiciary. Lord Neuberger claimed that politicians could have been ‘quicker and clearer’ to defend the judges following November’s High Court hearing.
Lord Neuberger stated that judges were the ‘ultimate guardians’ of the rule of law and that ‘if, without good reason, the media or anyone else undermines the judiciary that risks undermining our society’.
The Supreme Court begins taking applications for new justices today.
There have been a flurry of family law cases in the press recently. We set out an overview of some cases which have made headlines.
Tini Owens asked the Court of Appeal to overturn a family court decision which refused to grant her a divorce from her husband, Hugh Owens. Ms Owens told the court that she was desperately unhappy in her marriage to her husband due to, among other things, his insensitive and patronising behaviour towards her. Ms Owens said there was no chance of reconciliation but Mr Owens disagreed. Ms Owens’ reasoning was not considered by the family court to be grounds that a petitioner for divorce could rely upon and the divorce was refused. A ruling from the Court of Appeal has not yet been published.
Katriona MacFarlane and James MacFarlane were embroiled in a divorce battle worth £2.3million. Ms MacFarlane told the Court of Appeal that she had given up her job as a head teacher on the premise that her husband had promised he would look after her. She argued that she should therefore be compensated for her loss of career. Ms MacFarlane also argued that the divorce settlement should be increased to enable her to buy a house similar to the £1m property she occupied with her husband. Judge Moylan rejected her case and said that the decision for Ms MacFarlane to stop working had been a joint one and therefore did not merit additional compensation. Judge Moylan also said that although a couple’s previous standard of living should be taken into consideration, it should not be a determinative factor in deciding how much money to award.
When Denise Brewster’s partner of 10 years, Lenny McMullan died suddenly, she was denied a survivor’s pension. This was because the couple were not married and McMullan had failed to nominate Brewster (as his co-habiting partner) to receive the pension. Brewster appealed this decision and won her case at the Supreme Court. The case is significant as it extends pension benefits automatically to unmarried cohabitees.