Welcome to The Lawyer’s first monthly edition, which coalesces reporting, insight and data into a digestible read that gives you actionable intelligence on the market and will lead the debate around the practice and delivery of global legal services.
As you’ll see, we are unifying our content for this first issue around the core idea of ambition. That ambition can be inward-facing, where legal teams or law firms set themselves goals to improve their own processes, and outward-facing, where it’s all about growth and the firm desire to beat the competition.
The how
The first section of the magazine is born from feedback from our readers and delegates to our events such as the GC Strategy Summit and the Business Leadership Summit. It’s rare that legal functions and law firms can share best practice, so we’re creating a forum in which to do so. This section functions as a toolbox for in-house and private practice, with case studies on business improvement and business development initiatives and on the way that general counsel run their teams.
I’d particularly draw your attention to our case study of National Grid, a team that has embarked on a thoroughgoing review of its panel and its internal systems and in the process has hit upon an ingenious method of getting its external advisers to collaborate with one another. There’s also a look at how Slaughter and May ran its foray into fintech start-ups, how RPC revamped its people strategy, and two in-house profiles, of Orange Business Services and GoCardless.
The what
The second section is the ‘what’: data snapshots from The Lawyer’s vast research programme that give you competitive intelligence on specific aspects of the legal market. This month you can see the first quarter results of our Court Rankings project, courtesy of The Lawyer Litigation Tracker, and of our global real estate research.
The why
This section is designed to provoke your thinking, with detailed analysis underpinned by proprietary data. This month we investigate Allen & Overy’s ambitions to dominate global IP, White & Case and Latham & Watkins’ simultaneous aims to build a public M&A practice in the City, and CMS, Nabarro and Olswang’s three-way play to create the UK’s biggest real estate team. What are the challenges facing all of these firms, and how likely are they to succeed? We’re also running an extract from Bruce MacEwen’s recent study of the legal market, in which he picks out some of the most significant challengers to law firms’ market share.
The where
The last section is international. What is going on in key overseas jurisdictions? This month’s section leads off with a warts-and-all analysis of the three Chinese firms that you need to know about, followed by insight into the key players in the CEE, an increasingly important region for Western European firms. It ends with an examination of corporate bench strength among offshore firms and tracks which firms are doing what deals.
There’ll be much, much more to come next month. In the meantime, we’re still bringing you all the news that counts, every morning and afternoon on thelawyer.com. Enjoy your read.
The post Welcome to The Lawyer’s first monthly edition appeared first on The Lawyer | Legal News and Jobs | Advancing the business of law.