Laurence Rabinowitz QC of One Essex Court is generally recognised as one of the leading silks at the commercial Bar. In a forthcoming presentation to London Solicitors Litigation Association, he will be talking about recent developments in the law of restitution following decisions of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal in Menelaou, ITC and Littlewoods.

The event will be held in the Auditorium at Hogan Lovells, Atlantic House, 50 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2FG.

Further details are available here

A national care home operator which looks after hundreds of elderly and vulnerable people across the country has admitted being at fault for the death of a resident at one of its homes after facing legal action.

Prime Life Ltd – which runs more than 50 care and nursing homes across the country – was the subject of a major investigation around care provided at its Wyton Abbey facility near Hull, East Yorkshire, following the deaths of two residents within 10 months of one another.

Now, a legal case around the care of one of those residents has seen the firm admit being responsible for the 72-year-old’s death.

The case was handled by legal care home claims specialists Hudgell Solicitors, who are currently campaigning for improved care services across the UK and calling for CCTV to be made compulsory in all care and residential homes.

The legal case surrounded the care of dementia sufferer Anthony Dearnley, who died after being placed in the home for respite by his wife, when she took a two-week holiday from the daily demands of being his carer.

During that two weeks, Mr Dearnley suffered a series of falls, leaving him with bruises on his arm, left hip, forehead, and nose.

Latham & Watkins has won the lead role for US-based FMC Technologies on its $13bn (£8.9bn) merger with French-listed Technip, which turned to Davis Polk & Wardwell and Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier.

Oil and gas services company FMC Technologies was represented by a cross-border team from Latham led by Chicago partners Mark Gerstein and Bradley Faris.

They were assisted by Chicago-based benefits and compensation partner Robin Struve and tax partner Nicholas DeNovio, while litigation issues were handled by Douglas Greenburg in Washington DC.

In Europe, Latham Paris partner Patrick Laporte and London partner Richard Butterwick were on hand for advice, with the transaction due to be completed through a European cross-border merger. This means a new English company will absorb Technip in a reverse triangular structure and FMC Technologies will become a subsidiary of the new company.

Davis Polk & Wardwell was meanwhile instructed by FMC’s merger partner Technip. The company was advised by two New York partners William Aaronson and Brian Wolfe, with partner Jacques Naquet-Radiguet and counsel Juliette Loget working in Paris.

The US firm co-led on the deal with French-headquartered Darrois, who fielded a team led by corporate partners Jean-Michel Darrois, Bertrand Cardi and Benjamin Burman. Partner Vincent Agulhon advised on tax aspects, while partner Henri Savoie and of counsel Patrick Mèle worked on public law aspects.

The deal is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2017 and the new company will be called TechnipFMC. Together, the two reported revenues of $20bn (£13.7bn) in 2015.

British American Tobacco (BAT) will seek leave to appeal a decision by the High Court rejecting its attempt to overturn UK legislation introducing plain packaging for tobacco products.

The ruling, handed down on Thursday (19 May), dismissed the judicial review brought by BAT and other global tobacco giants.

Plain packaging laws, which BAT said breached its intellectual property rights, will come into force on 20 May.

BAT revealed following the ruling it will seek leave to appeal the decision through its lawyers, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF).

The judicial review brought by BAT, Philip Morris, JT International and Imperial Tobacco was dismissed on Thursday (19 May) in a 400-page ruling by Mr Justice Green.

Green J upheld the lawfulness of the new regulations and rejected the grounds of challenge in their entirety. He said the regulations were “proportionate”, both when they were first drafted by Parliament and in light of recent evidence following similar legislation in Australia.

The tobacco giants had sought to challenge the law on the grounds it was unlawful under international law, EU law and domestic common law.

Earlier this month the EU’s highest court similarly upheld a law that will standardise packaging and ban the advertising of e-cigarettes. Philip Morris and BAT challenged the proposed legislation and said the EU was overstepping its authority to direct laws in member states.

Ashurst, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, HSF and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom were instructed to bring the legal challenges in the UK. Leigh Day also appeared during the court proceedings last December for the intervener, Action on Smoking and Health.

In a statement, BAT said: “This decision by the English High Court is by no means the final word on the lawfulness of plain packaging. We believe that the judgment contains a number of fundamental errors of law and we are applying for leave to appeal the decision.

“The judgment, if left to stand, should also raise real concerns for many other legitimate businesses as it creates a worrying precedent whereby public policy concerns can ride roughshod over long established fundamental commercial rights.”

Lloyd’s of London general counsel Sean McGovern has left the business to join insurance and reinsurance company XL Group to work as chief compliance officer, head of regulatory and government affairs.

McGovern has worked at Lloyd’s since 1996 and has been credited for expanding its global licence network, developing relationships with regulators, and deepening trading links with the US market. He was also instrumental to ensuring that Lloyd’s was prepared for the introduction of Solvency II at the beginning of the year.

In his current role McGovern has worked as a member of the executive team since 2002 and was appointed to the franchise board in 2014.

In order to “protect commercial confidentiality” McGovern will no longer be involved in syndicate-specific activity. He will go on gardening leave in July before taking up his new role at XL in November.

Following McGovern’s departure he will be replaced as general counsel by head of legal and compliance Peter Spires while head of internal audit Hilary Weaver will take up the role of chief risk officer on an interim basis.

In the newly created role at XL McGovern will have responsibility for the business’ corporate and regulatory compliance and will lead its global regulatory and government affairs. He will report to the audit committee of the board and to chief executive officer Mike McGavick.

McGavick said: “There’s no greater endorsement of our strategy and our vision for the future than our ability to attract the industry’s leading talent and we’re very pleased to have Sean join XL Catlin in this key role.

“For some time, we’ve been considering, in light of the continuing evolution of global insurance regulatory standards and expectations, how to best arrange our compliance and regulatory areas. The addition of Sean allows us to accelerate our plans to more closely align and increase the profile of these critical functions.”

Last year XL Group acquired insurance giant Catlin Group for $4.2bn. Debevoise & Plimpton, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, and Slaughter and May all played key advisory roles during the deal.

Dentons has joined the growing number of firms opening low-cost shared services centres outside the UK with the announcement of a new business services office in Warsaw.

The office, dubbed Dentons Business Services EMEA (DBSE), is a joint initiative between the UK Middle East and Africa (UKMEA) and Europe regions of the firm.

Dentons will start transitioning work to Warsaw during the course of 2016/17. The firm is to carry out a consultation process with affected staff in the UK with around 50 roles impacted.

The firm said some of the 50 roles were currently fixed-term contracts or vacant and it would try to mitigate redundancies.

“We will be providing support to those affected during this period of uncertainty,” the firm added in a statement.

The firm added that by the end of 2016 it would have around 90 to 100 staff in the DBSE. As well as the UK roles, some functions will move to Warsaw from the rest of Europe.

Dentons has already begun shifting business services jobs to Poland, locating new hires in Warsaw in recent months as vacancies have occurred elsewhere in Europe.

The firm has hired Piotr Macieja to head up the initiative from professional services provider TMF, where he headed the service delivery coordination centre.

DBSE will supply business services such as finance, business development and marketing, human resources and IT.

Global chair Joe Andrew said the move was a “logical step” after the firm’s recent expansion and that it would enable Dentons to “leverage our scale and resources more effectively”.

Europe CEO Tomasz Dąbrowski added: “Closer integration is one of our key strategic objectives as a firm and this is a vehicle for the UKMEA and Europe regions to achieve this and ultimately improve the way we do things. We are operating in a very competitive environment and our clients expect us to deliver services consistently and in the most cost effective way possible.”

The DBSE team will add to Dentons’ existing headcount in Poland. The firm is the largest in the Polish legal market with over 300 staff, including around 180 lawyers. However the firm is expected to take new space to accommodate the DBSE team.

Dentons is the third firm in a week to announce it is making UK redundancies as a result of opening a shared services centre overseas. Earlier today (19 May) Norton Rose Fulbright said it was moving 170 jobs to the Philippines, while DLA Piper said last week (11 May) it was making 200 UK support staff redundant as it moved its back office function to Warsaw.

Linklaters also opened a shared services centre in Warsaw last year.

This week the use of predictive coding, or technology-assisted review, hit the headlines when the High Court ruled on its first contested use in a UK litigation disclosure exercise.

Berwin Leighton Paisner secured a victory for its client, BCA Trading, in the form of an order to use predictive coding technology as part of document review, the first time such an order has been granted.

Next week The Lawyer will host a free, live webcast to discuss the increasingly controversial topic of predictive coding in the wake of the BCA case.

The case highlights the growing interest in predictive coding in the UK. In February this year Master Matthews, the co-author of the leading text on disclosure, gave the first-ever formal judicial endorsement of the use of predictive coding in the UK when he granted approval for its use in Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd.

Although predictive coding has been used for several years in the US, its use in the UK is still in its infancy and several lawyers have expressed concerns over using it due to a variety of perceived risks.

In the US, where it has been used for several years, lawyers have expressed fears related to the lack of understanding in the underlying technology, the so-called ‘black box’ concerns.

“If people don’t understand how predictive coding works because they don’t understand the technology then there is a corresponding fear that a large proportion of documents relevant to their case could be left out,” claimed one US lawyer familiar with predictive coding.

There are also concerns over the level of transparency and co-operation required to use predictive coding in the adversarial litigation process, in that both sides of a dispute are required to participate in the process of ‘training’ the software that identifies relevant documents.

“The fear is that you will have to let your opponent see documents that they wouldn’t otherwise be entitled to see,” said the lawyer, “information that they consider sensitive and sacrosanct.”

The lawyer added that in his opinion predictive coding was a “fabulous tool” and significantly more cost efficient than traditional disclosure methods.

“But often, once people hear the other side wants to use predictive coding they immediately think they’ll have to reveal documents so they say ‘forget it’, he added.

Advocates of predictive coding, including lawyers and technology providers, claim it has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of the disclosure process and indeed can be more accurate than traditional methods.

Next week’s webcast, held in association with FTI Consulting, will examine a range of issues raised by Pyrrho and the BCA Trading case and assess the impact they are likely to have.

Topics will include whether humans remain the gold standard when it comes to disclosure, whether in an era of booming levels of data and electronic documents the Pyrrho case will open the door to significantly greater use of predictive coding, and what the most important factors that need to be considered when deciding to use predictive coding are.

The webcast will feature a panel of experts who will offer views from the standpoint of technology providers, private practice and clients: Jonathan Fowler, senior director and predictive coding expert at FTI Consulting; Giulia Da Re, litigation lawyer for Lloyds Banking Group; and Mark Chesher, legal director for Addleshaw Goddard.

A team of corporate lawyers from Walker Morris has provided corporate legal advice to specialist waste management business, Augean, on its acquisition of Colt Holdings and its subsidiary, Colt Industrial Services in a £13.95m deal.

Based in Hull and established over 25 years ago, Colt provides a broad range of industrial services, which complement Augean’s existing service offering, to a range of customers including major industrial companies, oil refineries, rail and utilities.

Augean will pay an initial sum of £9.2m, net of £4.5m of cash acquired, with additional potential earn-out based payments of up to £4.75m, subject to Colt securing certain contracts.

In recognition of their pro bono work for Barnardo’s, John McKendrick QC and Katarina Sydow were invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace on 12 May 2016, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the charity’s foundation.

John and Katarina have provided advice and training to Barnardo’s and were delighted to participate in the event, which recognised the work of Barnardo’s staff and volunteers in improving the lives of vulnerable children.

Outer Temple Chambers has a strong commitment to pro bono work and members of Chambers are happy to support such worthwhile causes.

Christodoulos G Vassiliades & Co has announced that Corporate Livewire, a group that provides business professionals and individuals in the corporate finance sector with information on the latest news and developments from around the globe has selected our firm as winner of Offshore Excellence Awards 2016 in the Category Cyprus Financial Services Law Firm of the Year.

Corporate Livewire’s new Offshore Excellence Awards celebrate the achievements of those whom excel in offshore industries. These awards recognise outstanding company success, safety and technology innovations and exceptional individual performance within dedicated categories across every aspect of offshore business, including finance and law, maritime, energy, and oil & gas.

Collas Crill has been shortlisted for ‘Offshore Law Firm of the Year’ in the Lawyer Awards 2016.

The news comes just six months after the law firm significantly evolved its brand to reflect the growth of the firm’s global footprint and to meet the changing needs of both its local and multi-jurisdictional clients.

The re-brand followed the merger of Collas Crill and CARD in the Cayman Islands in 2015, which launched the first offshore law firm with offices in Singapore, Cayman Islands, London and each of the Channel Islands.  With a focus on core values and a promise to be ‘easy to do business with’ the bold firm is already being recognised as the preferred people to partner with.

Collas Crill Group Managing Partner, Jason Romer, said: “In the face of an ever-changing modern global business environment, we know that we must be willing to change, adapt and grow to continue to offer the highest standards of service our clients expect.

“Our strapline – ‘We Are Offshore Law’ – reflects not just on the work we do but also our hands-on, involved approach.  Due to constant changes in regulation and legislation the offshore legal landscape demands innovation, creativity and a forward-thinking perspective, which is exactly what Collas Crill has always been about.  Our brand sends a strong message about the way we do business and what differentiates us from our competitors.  Being shortlisted for this award is great recognition for the work that everyone in the firm has done and the great work that we achieve with our clients – helping them to realise their goals.”

The refreshed identity was rolled out across all of the firm’s five offices in the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Jersey, London and Singapore.

The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on 29 June 2016.  Collas Crill have also been shortlisted for the Wealthbriefing European Awards in the ‘Offshore Firm of the Year’ award which takes place next week and won ‘Legal Team of the Year (midsize)” at the STEP Private Client Awards 2015/16.

Professional services consultancy business WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff has appointed Addleshaw Goddard partner Karen Sewell as EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa) general counsel and UK head of legal.

Sewell has worked as a finance projects partner within Addleshaws’ Leeds office for the last five years, having been made up in 2011. She also held the role of graduate partner for the firm’s Leeds office.

Having trained at Linklaters in 1999 Sewell moved on to take an associate position at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher where she spent time in both London and New York.

Sewell’s experience includes representing banks, financial institutions and corporate borrowers in relation to all aspects of financing transactions. This includes corporate debt facilities for both public and private companies, leveraged and acquisition financing, debt restructuring, real estate financing and structured finance.

As general counsel Sewell will be based in Leeds and London and will sit on the UK’s executive leadership team. She will report to UK chief operating officer Mark Naysmith.

Sewell replaces Nick Weston who left the company in January.

Earlier this week Addleshaw’s head of insurance Mark Pring left the firm to join Reed Smith. Pring specialises in handling international arbitration proceedings and cross border litigation and was Addleshaws’ only specialist insurance partner.

South West firm TLT saw turnover soar by 15 per cent during the 2015/16 financial year, from £62.5m to £71.6m.

The latest results mark the end of TLT’s three-year growth strategy. During this time the firm has increased revenue by 45 per cent from £48.2m in 2012/13.

Since then the firm has grown year-on-year with revenue increasing 20 per cent to £57.9m in 2013/14 and 8 per cent to £62.5m in 2014/15.

Along with the growth in revenue TLT has also increased its total headcount by 60 per cent and now has over 1,000 members of staff. This figure includes the firm’s partnership, which now stands at 111.

Managing partner David Pester said: “Over the last three years we’ve expanded into disrupted UK markets to win market share and deliver against our strategy through organic growth and tactical team hires. These significant investments to build our UK business underpin our results this year.”

Pester added that TLT will turn its energy to the next stage of its development, which will look at how the firm will continue “to deepen its expertise and stay relevant to clients”. TLT will launch its new three-year strategy in the summer.

In January TLT’s senior partner Robert Bourns stepped down from the role to take up a position as the Law Society’s next president. Bourns was replaced by head of real estate Andrew Glynn.

Blockchain is the technological darling of the financial press. Once a niche technology, blockchain has captured the interest and research spend of legislators, regulators, investment banks, financial markets and venture capital funds. There are plenty of “explainers” which describe what blockchain is. The time has now come to move from “what” and “why” to consider the regulation of “how”.

Blockchain relies on the principle that people can share and verify communal knowledge stored in a digital ledger. There is a slightly broader term of distributed ledger technology (DLT) which refers to a system of databases where all nodes in a system connect to cryptographic infrastructure which ensures consensus between them. Although marginally different, the terms are often used interchangeably. However, the crucial piece is that there is a verified record is held in many places at once, digitally and in encrypted form.

As DLT is a new means of managing transaction recording, storage and data sharing, it can be applied to a wide variety of services and activities, such as peer-to-peer lending, proxy voting, medical data, property records and ownership of securities. One of DLT’s most interesting potential uses is increasing financial industry efficiency, especially in post-trade processing, auditing and regulatory reporting.

As we get closer to using DLT for financial market infrastructure, regulatory scrutiny will intensify. How should DLT be regulated? How will regulators address the cross-border issues which will inevitably arise? Are there deeper legal and public policy issues to consider?

Following the lead of industry interest, many regulators have established blockchain taskforces or discussion groups and made public statements on the use of DLT in financial markets. This includes the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), the Financial Stability Board, the US Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, European Securities and Markets Authority, the Japan Financial Services Agency, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Statements by these regulators and others have generally been engaged and optimistic, though in the words of one, focused on “responsible innovation”. Consideration of international cooperation on DLT is also a theme, with the Bank for International Settlements Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures noting in its Digital Currencies Report that “a coordinated approach at a global level may be important for regulation to be fully effective”.

So far, regulators have been focused on two aspects of DLT in particular: which approach they should take to regulate the development and use of DLT and what benefits regulators themselves may accrue from DLT.

On the approach, regulators around the world are focused on a balance between fostering innovation and ensuring market stability.  While learning quickly about the benefits of and challenges to DLT, regulators are considering the way forward for start-ups and incumbent financial institutions alike.

In the words of Australian Securities and Investments Commission Chairman, Greg Medcraft, “[a]s regulators and policymakers we need to ensure what we do is about harnessing the opportunities and broader economic benefits, not standing in the way of innovation and development”.

This approach was echoed by CFTC Commissioner Giancarlo, who has proposed the view that DLT should be regulated with the same approach as was taken with the development of the internet, noting that “do no harm” was the right approach then as it is now.

A key incentive for regulators to take this approach is the transparency which DLT can provide.  Transparency could take a number of forms, but a key benefit would come from the transparency regulators would enjoy, if given access to relevant ledgers and cryptographic keys, to observe transactions in near real-time and determine patterns of money moving between financial institutions.

The transparency advantage could also lower market participants’ compliance costs, as regulators would have access to their own copy of a DLT ledger. The combination of such transparency and the immutability of the record would enable regulators to review and audit transactions as they happen, or during a later investigation. Suspicious transactions could be identified and traced without the time lag that generally hampers regulators.

There is a deeper set of possible regulatory benefits too. If DLT is combined with smart contracts then regulation could move more from an “extrinsic” setting to an “intrinsic” setting, such that compliance becomes hard-wired into the very fabric of the marketplace.

Regulation in DLT goes beyond dealings with regulators. Critical legal issues also form part of its regulatory framework. In addition to quite complex cross-jurisdictional legal issues there are also fundamental issues such as the conflict between the flexibility of the public policy of laws and the immutability of the ledger.

A key strength of DLT in providing transaction certainty could be a weakness if the flexibility to adapt is lost. An example where this issue can be relevant is insolvency, where legal systems replace strict contractual adherence with proportionate liability in the interests of public policy. The breadth of legal flexibility in the “real” world needs to be considered in creating the architecture of a DLT solution.

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology could transform the fabric of the financial marketplace in many ways, or more specifically, as Nasdaq’s CEO Bob Greifeld recently put to a room full of City execs: “If you are in a blockchain-enabled environment […] you have the ability to leapfrog and do things in 10 minutes.”

Regardless, regulation is fundamental to that marketplace.  For the transformation to be achieved, the issues of regulation, in all their forms, needs to be identified, analysed and solved.

Andreas Gustafsson, senior vice president and Jimmy Kvarnström, vice president at Nasdaq with Scott Farrell and Andrew Wingfield, partners at King & Wood Mallesons

Chancery judge Mr Justice Peter Smith has been involved in a number of controversies during the course of his career. At the moment, he stands accused of bias after a row over an article written by Blackstone Chambers’ Lord Pannick QC last year.

Following a hearing in the Court of Appeal this week, Peter Smith J is now blocked from hearing cases argued by members of Blackstone. And we revealed later in the week that Addleshaw Goddard is among firms which cannot appear before the judge, following another bias row almost a decade ago.

Also in the courts this week was a landmark judgment involving predictive coding, the use of technology for document review, with Berwin Leighton Paisner securing victory for its client.

Meanwhile we also reported that litigation boutique Signature Litigation has displaced Debevoise & Plimpton on a major mandate for mining giant ENRC, defending the company against a civil claim brought by the Serious Fraud Office.

Away from the contentious world, two major corporates are restructuring their legal teams. Banking giant Barclays is looking at its structure ahead of regulatory reforms designed to minimise risk in the financial sector, while Centrica is restructuring in a move expected to see a dramatic reduction in lawyer headcount across both British Gas and Centrica Energy.

The other trend of the moment is for private practice firms to cut costs by moving their business services teams to low-cost jurisdictions. Norton Rose Fulbright jumped on the bandwagon this week, announcing it was shifting 170 jobs to the Philippines.

Linklaters, meanwhile, last week became the first magic circle firm to sign a deal with artificial intelligence provider RAVN. The company’s software extracts specific pieces of data and information from large documents more efficiently than by using lawyers or paralegals.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is also in the midst of change and the magic circle firm’s latest move is to review its finance practice in a bid to boost profits.

The top 10 stories last week was completed with a popular special report on agile working, in conjunction with consultancy JLL.

In an effort to spread my dining net further afield than central London and South Oxfordshire, my two usual stamping grounds, I decided to go west, specifically to Bristol and even more specifically, the Clifton part of Bristol.

I think that Bristol may now be the second food city of the UK and it is quite astonishing that I have not managed to make my way there before now. With perfect timing, I managed to just miss the Bristol Food Connections Festival, which took place between 29 April and 7 May. So many interesting events and exhibitors, I will make sure that it’s on my hit list for next year.

But maybe it was a blessing, because I’m not sure I would have been able to get into the various restaurants that I visited had I been there when Bristol was overrun with food people.

I was hardly there five minutes when I had already found my way to the wonderful café that is Katie and Kim; a fairly ramshackle yet charming affair in the Montpelier district, it does a short sharp menu from which I ordered a brilliant fennel tart and hot (in both senses) ginger tea. Some perfectly cooked greens in a buttery sauce and a home-made mayonnaise with fresh fennel on the side made this a ridiculously good value meal at £7.

I might not have eaten quite as much of the enormous portion of fennel tart had I known what was to come at Birch. You’d walk past Birch if you didn’t know anything about it. On a corner, in a former off-licence in the middle of a nondescript residential street, Birch is the sort of restaurant that I would visit on a weekly basis were it my local. It’s run by a couple who trained in London and who care.

Home-made sourdough with home-made butter kicked off the proceedings properly and I knew straightaway that they knew what they were doing. A gull’s egg with celery salt was a deep speckled green encasing a bright orange yolk and the fresh celery salt was a revelation for those of us who have only had that brown powdery stuff which passes for celery salt in most households. Who knew?

One single perfect oyster with a rhubarb compote gave a perfect umami hit – a bit of freshness before the salt cod fritters and ransom mayonnaise. Four large croquettes appeared with a bright green dipping mayonnaise. Perfectly cooked, these were rich yet light creamy and a bit gooey. At this point I tried to stop myself finishing off the bread. Futile.

It was technically possible that I was not going to order the shepherd’s pie, described as for two to share, but it was never going to happen. This was the sort of shepherd’s pie you wish had featured in your childhood, the sort of shepherd’s pie that you dream about when you think of comfort food, the sort of shepherd’s pie you carry on eating until you give yourself indigestion. Or maybe that is just me. There was sufficient pie for four. We ate it all. I ate most of it. There was a plate of greens and cooked radishes. We tried, we failed.

Because I was going to keep on eating that shepherd’s pie until it was finished and indeed I did, I could not fully enjoy the joy that was the rhubarb, custard and toasted oats, a sort of deconstructed rhubarb crumble, the custard almost like the filling in a custard tart in texture, everything absolutely spot on. I took a spoonful from C. I got a look.

It is worth mentioning that the most expensive bottle of white wine on the menu was £33. The bill, for three courses and wine was just over £70 before service. Ridiculous.

I did not recover fully from that meal until late afternoon the next day when I managed to force myself to go to Wallfish, another perfect little neighbourhood restaurant where I hoovered down a crunchy, tangy cuttlefish croquette before the main event, a whole cracked Portland crab with lemon and mayonnaise. It wasn’t dressed, like other crabs you may have had, but appeared, its eyes staring at me and I had to yank its head off, which was rather distressing but I got over it fairly quickly.

Simple and perfect, the crabmeat was extraordinarily good and the mayonnaise home-made. I faffed around with various implements to extract the very last bits of crabmeat from the seemingly never-ending legs whilst C busied himself with a firm piece of roast black bream, pan-fried with rosemary butter and burnt lemon. Again, another perfect neighbourhood restaurant, of the sort that I would kill for in London.

Later, not wanting to eat more, I did manage to find myself in Bar Buvette, a fairly funky wine bar for some very lovely wine and excellent charcuterie, before ending up at Swoon Gelato for some magnificent Baci and hazelnut ice cream, because I really needed.

Because I like to make things easy for you, can I also recommend that you stay at Number 38. You’ll find the rooms at the top particularly gorgeous though Room 3 is also lovely and much cheaper. I have already booked my next visit.

Best for: life outside London

Worst for: dieters

Forsters has announced its sixth consecutive year of double-digit turnover growth, with revenue rising 11.3 per cent in 2015/16 to £46.2m.

The firm’s fee income has now more than tripled since it featured in The Lawyer Rising 50 in 2004 with turnover of £14m.

The Mayfair outfit said its private wealth business had seen revenue rise by over 20 per cent last year, while its real estate team recorded a 14 per cent rise in income.

Instructions in the latter group came from existing clients such as Aberdeen Asset Management, Moorfield Group and the Crown Estate. Meanwhile Forsters’ property team won new work from clients including LaSalle Investment Management, Qatari Diar, APAM, Essential Living, and the Nationwide Pension Fund.

Managing partner Paul Roberts said the strategy of focusing on real estate and private wealth had been key to the firm’s growth.

Royal Mail group general counsel Maaike de Bie outlines what in-house counsel think about firms flocking to Warsaw and Manila in The Lawyer‘s first 60-second interview on key topics from the upcoming Business Leadership Summit.

Are you surprised by this apparent sudden rush to places like Warsaw and Manila? 

Not at all. In fact, so many other (law firms) and outsource providers have established themselves in these places. In my view they are late to this game – next will be Hungary and Bulgaria because of their excellent IT resources.

Is the vocabulary that firms are using i.e. ‘relocating roles’ misleading, in that the reality is these are simply job cuts?

They are euphemisms. Everyone uses them.

What do you think is the salary differential between, say, Warsaw and Manchester?

Salary will be much lower in Warsaw, but the cost of housing in Warsaw is actually quite expensive. I believe when outsourcing goes to Poland, it doesn’t actually go to Warsaw but rather to other Polish cities with universities.

Other than cost reduction, what are the biggest advantages of Warsaw over Manchester or Belfast?

Good question. Isn’t it all about talent, and how accessible that is?

What sorts of roles do you think will be affected? What job prospects do you think there are for the people who lose their roles in these cuts?

Mostly IT, admin and more junior roles. There is always room for good people, but the key is to innovate and to keep learning to stay ahead of the rate of change.

Does the fact that the numbers are so large reveal that these firms were over-staffed?

Or perhaps they were overcharging their clients for the work that was being performed… I wonder also if the refusal by millennials to do the more basic tasks has something to do with the outsourcing abroad.

What sorts of challenges does a move like this create for the lawyers working in head offices?

Less personal contact with what ultimately is still very critical work, language/cultural differences – and huge reliance on technology working well.

Do you think we’ll see more of these moves by other major firms?

Possibly. I wish they would think more about innovation rather than finding cheaper ways of delivering the same product. I’m still of the opinion that some of the alternative legal service providers will start taking work away from the more traditional law firms.

Ultimately, despite the human cost involved, is this what a properly managed large business ought to be doing? 

As I said above, I personally think that a properly managed large business ought to speak to its customers on a continuous basis and innovate to provide the best possible support.  Many businesses will not just look at price. The quality of service for many (certainly for me) is still the most important thing.

In this, the seventh year that The Lawyer has produced the European 100 report, total turnover for the Continent’s top 100 firms has broken through €9bn (£7bn) for the first time.

As a combined group, the top 100 saw turnover increase by 4.6 per cent between 2014 and 2015, a rise of just over €1bn in five years. Yet, in that time, the total number of lawyers has risen less than 1 per cent – from 22,659 in 2011 to 22,814 in 2015.

So Europe’s lawyers are working harder than ever and are making the most of what seemed to be – in 2015 at least – an improved economic environment. A continued flow of regulatory and investigations work kept litigators busy, while plenty of cross-border deals meant transactional lawyers were also happy.

But the picture is still mixed. Although most Irish firms remain cagey about their financial figures, they all expanded their headcount and, anecdotally, double-digit growth was the theme. Spanish firms also had their best year since the financial crisis, with all of Spain’s big four experiencing growth last year. Switzerland was another country where growth was the norm.

Most German firms also reported comfortable growth, but not all. In France, mid-sized firms fared better than the country’s two giants, Fidal and Gide Loyrette Nouel (see page 34). Benelux and Nordic figures were mixed, both across the regions and within individual jurisdictions.

The average European 100 firm turned over €90.2m last year with an average headcount of 425. Average revenue per lawyer rose 1.5 per cent to €395,000 last year, with average revenue per partner hitting €1.28m, up 1.6 per cent on 2014.

Turnover

Last year’s turnover figures for the European 100 ranged from €346.1m for France’s Fidal, which retained top spot, to €29.2m for fellow French firm Lefèvre Pelletier & Associés – a difference of €316.9m.

The difference in turnover between the largest and smallest firms in the rankings has narrowed from €329.1m in 2011, which demonstrates how the European market has consolidated rather than expanded.

Lefèvre Pelletier was the smallest of five new entries in this year’s European 100. The others – Italian firm Pirola Pennuto Zei and Dutch firms AKD and Van Doorne – came in as a result of providing figures for the first time. Meanwhile, German firm Heussen is back on the list after a few years’ absence following a revised turnover estimate.

As a result, five firms have exited the rankings, either through declining revenues or because their revenue growth was small enough to see them overtaken by others. These are Germany’s Buse Heberer Fromm, Dutch firm Boekel de Nerée, Denmark’s Bruun & Hjejle, Spanish firm Roca Junyent and Belgium’s Eubelius.

“The difference in turnover between the largest and smallest firms has narrowed, showing how the market has consolidated”

A number of firms still refuse to provide turnover figures, but this proportion continues to drop slightly year-on-year. Ireland remains the most opaque market, with only one out of seven of its European 100 constituents providing turnover, while Norway, Spain and Sweden are the most transparent. The vast majority of firms in France, Germany and the Benelux countries provide turnover figures.

A total of 27 firms reported, or were estimated to have had, a decline in turnover last year. A number of these were Norwegian, affected by a combination of flat or slightly lower turnover in krone terms exacerbated by a weaker exchange rate. Three firms experienced a fall in turnover of less than 1 per cent.

Six firms reported a flat turnover and four saw a rise of less than 1 per cent.

A total of 16 firms reported, or were estimated to have had, a double-digit rise in revenue last year. These included a 20 per cent increase for Ireland’s Mason Hayes & Curran, an estimated 22.9 per cent rise for Swiss firm Homburger, and a 23.8 per cent increase for rival Bär & Karrer.

Revenue per lawyer in 2015 ranged from €197,000 for Portugal’s PLMJ to an estimated €955,000 at German firm Hengeler Mueller. This band has narrowed from 2014, when it ranged from €189,000 at PLMJ to €1m at French firm Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier.

Meanwhile, average revenue per partner last year ranged from €520,000 for Graf von Westphalen in Germany to €3.39m at Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners. That compares to the previous year’s range of €490,000 for SKW Schwarz to €3.96m at Egorov Puginsky,underlining the narrowing gap between the largest and smallest firms in the rankings.

Profit

Profit figures remain much harder to come by than turnover figures, although again most of the Norwegian firms and several other Nordic players are comfortable revealing their net profitability.

In fact, the number of firms that gave profit figures dropped from 18 to 14 last year, and only 10 firms have provided profit figures two years running.

Half of the firms that disclosed their net profit had a margin of 50 per cent or more in 2015, up from only six in 2014.

Spanish firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, which provided data for the first time this year, said it had achieved net profit of €31.6m on revenue of €43.6m, equivalent to a margin of 72.5 per cent.

Norway’s Schjødt, always a profitable firm, saw its margin rise by 3.9 percentage points to 68 per cent, with revenue of €81.6m and net profit of €56.2m – or NOK729m and NOK502m.

Fellow Norwegian firms Wiersholm, Thommessen, Arntzen de Besche, Wikborg Rein and Selmer also reported margins of 50 per cent or more last year. Thommessen had not previously provided profit figures, while the rest all saw their margins slip slightly between 2014 and 2015.

Meanwhile, profitability was up at Haavind, Krogerus, Borenius and Setterwalls.

Fidal’s margin remains the lowest in the European 100 at 1.6 per cent, up from 1.35 per cent in 2014.

Headcount

As well as being Europe’s biggest firm by revenue, Fidal is also the largest in terms of workforce. In 2015, the firm had a total full-time equivalent (FTE) headcount of 2,225 staff, up from 2,213 the previous year.

However, Garrigues remains larger in terms of fee-earner and lawyer headcount, with 1,410 fee-earners and 1,263 lawyers compared with Fidal’s 1,368 and 1,205.

These two remain the only independent European firms to employ more than 1,000 lawyers – in contrast to staffing levels at the largest international firms, several of which now have more than 1,000 lawyers in Europe (see international section, page 26).

A total of 10 independent firms still employ fewer than 100 lawyers.

A significant minority – 40 firms – saw their lawyer numbers drop or remain stable last year. Most of those that added lawyers added only a relatively small number in percentage terms, although this was enough to result in a global increase.

Spanish firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo had the smallest partnership of just 20 and Fidal the largest, with 608 partners – more than twice as many as Garrigues. Only 13 firms in the European 100 have 100 or more partners and 45 have fewer than 50.

Property costs

For the first time we asked firms to provide data on their property costs and how much space they managed. Very few responded to this question, which has been a standard in The Lawyer UK 200 for several years.

The highest cost reported by any of the firms that did respond was at De Pardieu Brocas Maffei. The firm says its 4,500 square metre offices on the Avenue d’Iéna, close to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, cost it a total of €2.98m a year – or a whopping €662.82 per sq m. That is about €200 per sq m more than the next most-expensive premises, occupied by Dutch firm Loyens & Loeff and Norway’s Selmer. Loyens and Selmer both pay around €470 per sq m for their space.

Rent is also high for Italian firm Legance, which pays €412 per sq m for almost 10,000 sq m of space in Italy and London.

Switzerland’s Walder Wyss has six offices across the country and its rent averages CHF400 per sq m, or €374. The firm’s rent varies from €590 per sq m in Geneva to €239 per sq m in Lausanne.

Norway’s Wiersholm says it is paying €361 per sq m, and in Germany, Graf von Westphalen reports paying €349.06 for each sq m of its 9,050 sq m offices.

The cheapest property reported is occupied by Belgian firm Liedekerke Wolters Waelbroeck Kirkpatrick, whose 9,316 sq m of space cost it just €1.57m last year, or €168.12 per sq m.

Property costs also appear to be low in Iberia, with Cuatrecasas Gonçalves Pereira and Portuguese firm Morais Leitão Galvão Teles Soares da Silva both paying about €200 per sq m in 2015.

A number of firms provided information on the amount of space occupied, but did not give details of costs.

Borrowings

For the first time, we also asked European firms to give details of their bank borrowings. This prompted even fewer responses than the property costs question, but firms were more willing to expand on it during phone interviews with managing partners.

Unlike the UK market, where most firms have some level of bank borrowing even if it is netted out by cash to leave a positive cash balance at the year-end, most European firms that responded to the question said they avoided the banks entirely.

Liedekerke is the only firm to say it had net debt at the end of 2015.

Other firms that said they had some sort of bank facility included Germany’s Flick Gocke Schaumburg (FGS) and GSK Stockmann & Kollegen. FGS is preparing to move into new headquarters in Bonn, for which it has the freehold. The property is funded partially through partner capital and partly through a bank loan. GSK says it had an unused bank facility in 2015.

“Unlike the UK market, most European firms said they avoided bank borrowing entirely”

Switzerland’s Homburger and Froriep have both taken out loans to fund property refurbishment. Homburger borrowed CHF9m over a 10-year period when it moved into new offices some years ago, and Froriep took out a loan facility to fund current refurbishments at its Zurich offices.

In France, two firms say they had some limited borrowings last year. Employment boutique Fromont-Briens says it took out a small loan to fund property improvements, and Jeantet Associés went to the banks to fund its international expansion and also had a short-term loan facility. August & Debouzy says it has an overdraft facility that was unused last year.

However, most European firms appear to be staunchly against external borrowing, preferring to fund expansion or investment entirely through partner capital.

Strategy

Last year there was very little evolution in the strategy of independent European law firms. The key word is still “independent” – the European 100 are confident that there is a future in remaining tied to their home jurisdiction and working with a varied network of like-minded partners in other countries.

Nobody is actively seeking a merger with an international firm, and indeed most of the international firms profiled in the international section of this report are comfortable with their existing European presence anyway. Dentons is the one exception, having announced a Luxembourg merger, Hungarian expansion and an Italian launch in 2015.

Nevertheless, internationalisation remains the other watchword and firms are all looking for the best way to work on cross-border transactions. Strategies vary here. Some firms, notably the group of Slaughter and May’s ‘best friends’; the non-exclusive alliance of Chiomenti, Cuatrecasas, Gide and Gleiss Lutz; and the Nabarro-led ‘Broadlaw’ alliance are forging their own small networks.

Others think that being part of a global membership association is the best way ahead and the European 100 includes many such network members.

The Iberian firms have, arguably, been the most active in looking overseas for expansion opportunities. Garrigues is building its own network of Latin American offices and Uría Menéndez took a stake in a Latin American merger in 2014, which has since expanded. Also, Cuatrecasas launched in Mexico recently.

Meanwhile, Portuguese firms have well-established networks of offices in Portuguese-speaking Africa.

The most popular location for international expansion last year was New York, where two small Italian firms, Portolano Cavallo and Carnelutti, and Spanish firm Perez-Llorca all set up representative offices.

The year also saw changes in two French firms’ international strategies. Gide carried out a review of its international presence and continues to slim down outside France. That prompted smaller French firm Jeantet to take advantage, snaring Gide’s Budapest and Kiev offices to launch in Hungary and Ukraine, and in May 2016 picking up a Gide team to open in Moscow.

The major strategic trend in 2015 was for firms to seek to improve cross-selling between offices, where relevant, and between practice areas or sector groups. In fact, many are moving away from a practice area focus towards a sector focus in a bid to capture a wider range of work from key clients.

This trend is likely to continue in the future as the independent market looks to safeguard its way of working and win pitches against its larger, more integrated international rivals.

Read on for analyses of the top international firms in Europe and a five-year evaluation of the market.

International Top 50 in Europe

This year for the first time, the European 100 research covers the top 50 international firms, and growth is the running theme among them

This is the third year we have gathered headcount data for international firms in Continental Europe. The analysis covers all of Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the Baltics, Russia, the CIS and Turkey, but excludes the UK.

For the 2016 report, we have expanded the analysis to the top 50 international firms operating on the Continent, up from 30 in the previous two years. The vast majority of firms provided at least total numbers of European lawyers and partners, and most also gave staff and fee-earner numbers for Europe as a whole and for each jurisdiction.

This year’s analysis also expands the jurisdictions examined, to include Luxembourg and Poland as well as major markets such as France and Germany. An increasing number of firms are launching in Luxembourg, and Poland remains a key hub for many firms’ CEE operations.

The data covers all firms headquartered outside Continental Europe. For the purpose of the analysis, ‘network’ firms such as CMS and Eversheds, and Swiss vereins such as Baker & McKenzie and Norton Rose Fulbright are treated as a single entity. We consider that the benefits
these firms gain from operating under a single umbrella brand mean they should be looked at as one firm, despite not being financially integrated across the regions of the world.

“This year’s analysis extends to Luxembourg, where an increasing number of firms are launching, and Poland, which remains a key hub for many firms’ CEE operations”

In total, the top 50 international firms employ about 17,850 lawyers across the Continent, including almost 5,100 partners. That compares with the European 100’s lawyer headcount of 22,814 and partner count of 7,047.

But the numbers are skewed by CMS, which has provided headcount data for the first time. This reveals that the firm employs more than 3,000 lawyers in Europe, more than double the number employed by the largest independent firm by headcount, Garrigues.

Baker & McKenzie, with 1,345 lawyers in 2015, is also bigger than Garrigues and next-largest independent player Fidal.

The average size of the international 50 in Europe is 357 lawyers including about 100 partners, which means CMS is 10 times bigger in Europe than the average international firm.

Financial data

This year, a total of 11 firms have provided a figure for their Continental European revenues. That is up from eight firms out of the top 30 that did so the previous year.

Through interviews with management at the top 10 firms, we also have a little more information on some firms that have not provided numbers but did give an indication of how much Europe contributes to their revenue (see CMS profile, page 36 (the complete range of profiles are included in the market report)).

Among the 11 firms that gave figures, Bakers is the largest, with European revenue of €535.6m. That is €200m more than Fidal at top spot in the independent firms’ list, with only about 100 more qualified lawyers bringing in the money.

Bakers says its European turnover has risen by 5 per cent year-on-year, from €512m in 2014.

Hogan Lovells is the next-largest firm to provide figures. Its European revenue hit €359.8m last year, up 13 per cent from €319.6m in 2014.

In fact, growth was the theme across the firms that provided figures. Revenue growth ranged from a modest 1 per cent at Bird & Bird to 32 per cent at Clyde & Co, although Clydes is the smallest international firm to give revenue of just €12.4m last year. Neither Clydes nor Fieldfisher – with turnover of €28.6m – would have made it into the independent firms’ rankings.

Average revenue per lawyer (RPL) for the 11 firms that provided European turnover last year was €369,000, somewhat lower than the average RPL of €395,000 for independent firms. RPL ranged from €232,000 at Eversheds to €481,000 at Hogan Lovells.

Of the firms providing revenue figures, five also gave net profit figures. Profit margins for four of these five – Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), Bird & Bird, Eversheds and Taylor Wessing – were good, ranging from 27 per cent at BLP to 32.9 per cent at Eversheds. Fieldfisher’s European profit margin was much lower at 12.2 per cent.

Firms were also asked how much Europe contributed to their global income. The highest proportion was at Taylor Wessing, where Europe represents 45.6 per cent of total turnover. The lowest contribution from Europe was at Clyde & Co, with just 2.5 per cent of revenue generated on the Continent.

Some other firms did not give figures but did give an indication of turnover in interviews, and CMS was the largest of these. Executive chairman Cornelius Brandi says Europe represents around 70 per cent of CMS’s global turnover of €965m, putting it ahead of Bakers, whose European revenue is about €676m.

Clifford Chance’s LLP accounts show that in 2014/15, Continental Europe produced £469m, or 34.7 per cent, of its global turnover – about €604m. Allen & Overy (A&O) global managing partner Wim Dejonghe says Europe contributed a similar proportion of his firm’s turnover – around £417m (€537m) out of global revenue of £1.26bn in 2014/15.

Europe also accounts for about a third of White & Case’s global revenue, roughly €443m.

Meanwhile, Dentons’ European operations are clustered in its Europe LLP, for which 2015 accounts are not yet available. In 2014, the firm made €214.8m in Europe, but this is likely to have grown on the back of headcount expansion.

Headcount

Data provided by firms on their European headcount remains of variable quality. Where firms decline to provide a breakdown of staff and lawyer numbers by office, we have made estimates based on publicly available information from firms’ websites. Some firms provide Europe-wide figures, but do not give a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction breakdown.

As previously mentioned, CMS has provided figures for the first time in the three-year history of this research. Although these are actual headcount rather than full-time equivalent numbers, the figures show that the largest firm in Europe is even bigger than previously estimated.

Bakers keeps its place as the second-largest firm in Europe with 1,345 lawyers, followed by the four UK-headquartered magic circle firms.

A&O, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters employ similar numbers of lawyers across the Continent, ranging from 845 at A&O to an estimated 1,039 at Linklaters. Our estimate of Linklaters’ figures sees the firm growing between 2014 and 2015 to overtake Clifford Chance, which had 1,010 lawyers last year.

However, Clifford Chance appears to have a larger European partnership – 216 partners, compared to an estimated 197 at Freshfields, 196 at Linklaters and an actual figure of 192 for A&O.

“CMS provided figures for the first time and its figures show it is even bigger than previously estimated”

DLA Piper slipped down the rankings this year after providing us with figures; in 2014, its headcount was estimated. The firm had 730 European lawyers last year, including 270 partners.

Few firms saw significant growth in terms of lawyer numbers in 2015. The most sizeable growth was at Eversheds and Dentons, with both firms rising up the rankings as a result of recruitment.

Eversheds’ lawyer headcount rose by 18 per cent from 638 to 753, and overall staff numbers were up 13.7 per cent to 1,144 from 1,006. Dentons, whose international expansion last year included a launch in Italy and the hire of White & Case’s Budapest office, saw its lawyer headcount increase by 7.8 per cent from 689 to 743 and total staff numbers rise 13.6 per cent to 1,549.

Greenberg Traurig and McDermott Will & Emery, who were both just outside last year’s top 30, rise into that bracket this year thanks to increases in their lawyer numbers.

Firms that saw a drop in their European headcount last year include Bird & Bird, whose lawyer numbers dropped from 680 in 2014 to 626 last year, although partner numbers were flat at 164.

Meanwhile, Squire Patton Boggs’ European lawyer headcount dipped from 194 to 170, a fall of 12.4 per cent.

Structure

International firms are operating in Europe with a mix of structures, and the partner-to-associate ratios of the top 50 range from less than 1:1 at a couple of smaller players to 1:4.8 at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

Although Cleary’s partner-to-associate ratio rose between 2014 and 2015, the general trend was in the other direction. Only Freshfields, with an estimated ratio of 1:4, and Shearman & Sterling, with a ratio of 1:4.5, employed more than four associates to every partner last year.

White & Case’s partner-to-associate ratio fell from 1:4.1 in 2014 to 1:3.9 last year.

A total of 20 firms had a ratio between 1:1 and 1:1.9 in 2015 and 14 others employed between two and three associates for every European partner.

Diversity

A handful of firms did not provide female partner numbers for Europe, but the vast majority did. As the number of firms covered by this analysis has expanded from 30 to 50 this year and so encompasses a bigger universe, unlike last year, some firms did report a female partner proportion of more than 25 per cent.

Estimated figures for Olswang and DAC Beachcroft give these two firms female partner proportions of 47.3 per cent and 33.3 per cent, respectively, in Europe. Fieldfisher reports that 28.6 per cent of its European partners are women.

Meanwhile, 11 firms – up from just five of the top 30 last year – have a female partnership proportion of between 20 and 25 per cent.

Estimated or actual figures for Dechert, Freshfields, Kirkland & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig give these four firms a female partnership proportion in Europe of between 6 and 9.5 per cent.

Three firms – Gibson Dunn, Stephenson Harwood and Sullivan & Cromwell – have no female partners in Europe.

Ins and outs

There was significantly more investment by international firms in new European offices in 2015 than there was in 2014. In 2014, seven international firms launched seven offices across the Continent, and five closed offices.

Last year, 12 firms launched or announced the launch of a total of 15 offices across the Continent. Dentons launched in Milan and announced a merger in Luxembourg, while DWF opened in Brussels, Cologne and Munich.

Meanwhile, seven firms announced the closure of a total of nine offices last year. Germany saw the most exits as Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe pulled out of Berlin and Frankfurt, Olswang closed in Berlin, White & Case shut in Munich and Freshfields announced that it was merging its Cologne office with Düsseldorf.

Several of the closures were tied in with other firms taking on rivals’ teams. White & Case’s Budapest office moved to Dentons, and Olswang’s Berlin office joined Greenberg Traurig.

Last year several firms launched in new jurisdictions, including DWF’s first foray into mainland Continental Europe with offices in Brussels and Germany (although the firm already had a base in Ireland).

Expansion into Europe has continued into 2016, with firms such as Goodwin Procter making their first moves into the Continent through launches in Frankfurt last November and Paris in April this year.

Five years of the Euro 100

The past five years have seen a revival of fortune for most of the European 100, although growth has remained modest across that period for many. Here we look back at previous findings.

2011

The ongoing economic crisis in 2011 had a major impact on the independent legal market and there was a pronounced north-south divide in financial health.

Firms in Scandinavia and Germany largely enjoyed a very solid year with turnover up as much as 11 per cent in some cases, but those in jurisdictions such Italy and Spain found the going tough.

As a group Scandinavian firms had some of the biggest increases in turnover in the top 100, although much of this was down to the weakness of the euro against the Danish, Norwegian and Scandinavian kroner. The relative strength of those three currencies has led to turnover increases of as much as 20 per cent in euro terms for some firms with real revenue growth of around 6 per cent.

Hardly any firms saw much change in headcount, save for those few that undertook mergers during the course of 2011. One of the biggest risers as a result was the sole Russian entrant in the European 100, Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners, whose tie-ups with Magisters and Principium drove it up the rankings to 18th place.

More firms willingly provided information on their financials and equity breakdown and the median leverage was around 1:3.

Garrigues, before its move to an all-equity partnership, operated a 1:16.8 leverage in 2011.

Over a third of the top 100 firms had an all-equity partnership, and this number is set to increase as firms like Bonelli Erede Pappalardo and Cuatrecasas Gonçalves Pereira move towards all-equity partnerships.

2012

After cautious optimism at the beginning of 2012, hopes for better times proved unfounded and the year turned out to be just as turbulent as the previous three or four.

The economic and political picture across Europe remained uncertain, manifesting itself in investor uncertainty, unpopular legislative decisions and a resulting decrease in transactional work.

As a result, the picture of financial performance by Europe’s law firms for 2012 was even more mixed than the previous year.

“After cautious optimism at the beginning of 2012, hopes for a better year proved unfounded”

Most German firms in the top 100 had an excellent year. Of the bigger firms, Noerr’s turnover rose by nearly 7 per cent, Heuking Kühn Lüer Wotjek’s almost 4 per cent, and Luther celebrated a revenue rise of 9 per cent.

Norway was also a very good performer, hosting the biggest riser in percentage terms. Schjødt’s turnover went up by 14 per cent.

But Germany and Norway were the standout jurisdictions in seeing the vast majority of their European 100 firms recording a turnover rise. Among the top 10, three firms reported decreasing turnover and Gide Loyrette Nouel expected revenue to be stable.

Turnover was broadly stable or down for most firms in southern Europe, including Italy, Spain and Portugal. French firms had a very mixed year, but the overall picture was one of little change, or a decrease in revenue.

The financial picture for many of the European 100 was mirrored by the shape and size of firms. Few firms did any significant hiring during the year – again, Germany was the exception, with headcount growth almost across the board. Much of the drop in headcount was not due to redundancies, in contrast to the UK. Instead, firms made strategic decisions not to replace departures, or partners and associates left either for international rivals or for boutiques.

The changing headcount across Europe led to a change in the partner-to-associate ratio picture. Whereas in 2011 16 firms employed at least four associates for every partner, in 2012 only 12 did. The number of firms employing between two and three associates for every partner rose.

Meanwhile 82 firms provided their equity partnership figures for 2012. A growing number are bringing all their partners into the equity, and the overall trend is for lower leverage.

Another headcount metric that saw change was the proportion of female partners. Across the European 100 the average proportion of women in a firm’s partnership was 16.3 per cent, up just under one percentage point from 2011.

2013

The 100 constituent members of the European 100 2014 together brought in around €8.2bn in 2013. The total figure was a rise of just under €200m from 2012 as once again the continent’s legal market was marked by wide variances in performance. Turnover changes ranged from a massive +57 per cent at Belgian firm Liedekerke Wolters Waelbroeck Kirkpatrick to -11 per cent for Norway’s Selmer.

Liedekerke’s results, which included strong organic growth, were skewed by the successful completion of several large matters last year. The next largest increases came from Italy’s Bonelli Erede Pappalardo, which said its revenue had risen by 17.6 per cent – although it does not provide figures – and French firm Jeantet Associés, with a rise of 17.5 per cent.

Single-digit growth was the most common result. Around 30 firms had reported or estimated turnover rises of less than 5 per cent, and a further 16 turnover decreases of less than -0.5 per cent.

“In terms of headcount, 2013 was not a year in which European firms did much hiring”

Finland, France and Germany were the jurisdictions that performed best in 2013, while the rankings and results for the Norwegian and Swedish firms were adversely affected by much weaker exchange rates between the kroner and the euro in 2013. Accordingly the rankings and figures in euros showed larger negative changes than had actually been the case.

In terms of headcount, 2013 was not a year in which European firms did much hiring. The total headcount of the European 100 remained broadly steady at just under 22,000 lawyers. However there was a net gain in partners of 180, from 6,422 partners across the 100 firms to just over 6,600 last year.

A number of firms reduced their staff headcount too, perhaps in a recognition that clients are still on the hunt for value. Several chose to increase their fee-earner numbers to address the issue of cost, while at the same time adding to the partnership to meet demands for advice provided by senior, experienced lawyers.

2014

Combined revenue for the European 100 rose 5 per cent to €8.6bn in 2014.

For the first time in five years there was a change in the rankings of the top four firms this year as Fidal overtook Garrigues to claim top spot. That does not mean Garrigues had a poor year. Indeed, Iberia’s largest firm saw a revenue rise and, with several major strategic shifts, is on course for further growth.

Germany’s Noerr continues to climb the rankings, this year overtaking Gide Loyrette Nouel to take sixth place. Again this was primarily due to a stronger rise in revenue at Noerr than at the French firm; Gide had a better year in 2014 than it had done for several years.

Indications that Bonelli Erede Pappalardo had a record year propelled the Italian firm into the top 10 alongside its best friends Hengeler Mueller and Uría Menéndez, pushing multidisciplinary firm Rödl & Partner into eleventh.

The top 10 firms brought in total revenue of €2.38bn in 2014, up from €2.3bn from the same firms in 2013. However, headcount among the top 10 fell at all levels, albeit only marginally for partner numbers.

A total of 18 firms within the top 100 provided profit figures for 2014, up from 15 in 2013 and 12 in 2012.

Norway’s Schjødt remains the most profitable firm in the European 100 with an eye-watering margin of 65 per cent, down 0.8 percentage points from 2013. Its average profit per equity partner (PEP) in 2014 was NOK10m (€1.19m), which if converted into sterling would put it high up the UK 200 PEP table. Schjødt’s margin is better than any of the UK 200 firms.

Fellow Norwegian firm Wiersholm saw the greatest increase in profit last year. It reported net profit of NOK406m (€48.6m) on a revenue of NOK640m (€76.6m), equating to a margin of 63.5 per cent. That was up from 41.3 per cent in 2013.

“Norway’s Schjødt remains the most profitable firm in the European 100 with an eye-watering margin of 65 per cent”

The greatest fall in profit was at Belgian firm Liedekerke Wolters Waelbroeck Kirkpatrick. Net profit fell from €31m in 2013, a margin of 58.9 per cent, to €12.5m last year, giving a still-healthy margin of 39.8 per cent. However, 2013 was an exceptional year for the firm with a number of success fees giving rise to an extraordinary boost to both top and bottom line, and 2014 was a return to a more normal situation.

The highest PEP figure was produced by Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier. With a net profit of €31m and 18 equity partners, PEP stood at €1.72m last year. This converts to around £1.4m, a figure surpassed by only Slaughter and May and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in the UK.

Overall headcount grew and the European 100 employed a total of just under 41,000 people in 2014. Of those, 26,132 were fee-earners and 22,169 qualified lawyers. Total staff and fee-earner numbers rose compared with 2013, when total headcount stood at 40,587 and fee-earner numbers at 25,807, but lawyer numbers dipped incrementally from 22,194 – a decrease of just over 0.1 per cent.

Partner numbers continued to grow. In 2013 the 100 firms collectively had 6,679 partners; last year they had a total partnership headcount of 6,828, a 2.2 per cent rise.

The average lawyer to staff headcount last year was 1:0.85, up from 2013 when the ratio was 1:0.83. Meanwhile the average partner to associate ratio in 2014 was 1:2.25, slightly down from 1:2.3 the previous year.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I’m more than happy to take the compliment that large firms are paying to legal networks such as ours.

The fanfare with which Dentons announced plans to create its own ‘free’ legal network was highly significant. Not only is it another ringing endorsement for the network model, but it also sounded the death knell for delivering global legal services through the traditional corporate model only. If the self-styled ‘world’s largest law firm’ can’t make it work, who can?

Failed mergers and lacklustre ‘best friends arrangements’ are reported every day as major legal brands struggle to build their empires across borders. The difficulties of uniting disparate offices together under a corporate banner are numerous, with challenges around consistency and quality of service. In the midst of this corporate wrangling, the elite global legal networks have enjoyed unprecedented levels of growth as clients look for a global advantage through genuine local expertise ever further afield.

Without the struggles of multiple post-merger issues, organisations such as Interlaw have been able to spend the last couple of decades shaping our offering around the client’s increasing need for truly international, quality legal expertise. We now have a legal practice of 7,000-plus lawyers in over 125 cities worldwide – a size and international footprint that is at least on a par with Dentons’ itself. Our reach does not stop here, with several announcements of member firms in both established and emerging markets coming soon.

“Dentons’ approach  is likely to create little more than a digital directory of firms: being part of an elite network is so much more than that”

The comprehensive geographic coverage of the networks probably explains why many major law firms are turning their attentions to the successes of the network model – and with good reason. They want to see how they can make it work in a corporate setting. The problem is that a genuine, collaborative network can hardly sit within corporate confines – independence is our trump card. Our members enjoy the freedom and flexibility they have as independent firms, but are firmly committed to working together for the common good of our shared clients.

In essence, while Dentons’ approach is likely to create little more than a digital directory of firms, being part of an elite network is so much more than that. At Interlaw, we know from years of experience that it requires genuine commitment and collaboration to build a seamless quality offering for our multi-national clients to give them a global advantage in this increasingly smaller, more connected world.

For our members it’s not simply about being part of a conflicts referral process; collaborative working is key and of real value. Interlaw member firms get the opportunity to be legitimately involved in a global legal practice, working with and learning from some of the very best lawyers in the world – something they can be assured of, as every member firm has to pass stringent quality checks to qualify, with continuous vetting to ensure quality remains at the highest standard.

For example, lawyers from member firms are invited to join special business teams where they can build contacts with other specialists in their fields and share best practice. We have recently held international conferences for our employment, labour and pensions, and litigation and ADR teams, and the collegiate atmosphere is testament to the network model’s ability to promote partnership and knowledge sharing.

Growing up and out

I trust my Interlaw colleagues – as independent member firms we all retain our own unique corporate cultures, but are also invested in working to a set of shared principles. We also actually enjoy working together, something that can be a major stumbling block in the competitive environment of a global law firm. Political infighting can blight any efforts to galvanise collaborative working and is often the undoing of what, on paper, should be a successful merger.

Elite networks are not weighed down by these kinds of internal pressures and, as the legal landscape has transformed during the last decade, we haven’t had to waste time solving internal issues and instead have been able to look outwards and focus on the client’s evolving needs. That is why we are growing.

So, while I am still flattered that firms like Dentons are interested in our approach, I believe this ‘free’ network may prove to be a pale imitation of a genuine collaborative international platform for the practice of law.