Practice Management

Hiring ‘star’ or elite commercial lawyers often reduces the quality of the teams they join, a study has found, with some large law firms panicking about losing big clients unless they had “big names”.

An initiative by 50 City law firms to increase the number of solicitor apprentices “could snowball”, the chair of the City of London Law Society training committee has predicted.

Well-known law firm Anthony Gold has bucked the trend of firms adopting a corporate structure by moving to a full-equity partnership to give partners an equal stake in its development.

A lot of general counsel used the pandemic as an “opportunity to go off-panel” and instruct boutique law firms and alternative legal services providers, a leading law firm adviser has said.

The former chief executive of Brethertons has described how he saved the firm up to £300,000 in recruitment fees by finding lawyers himself on LinkedIn.

The experience of the pandemic has given lawyers greater confidence in innovation and technology, leading to a “step change” in their use over the past three years, major research has found.

“Partnership is dying” as a model for new law firms, though it remains “an option”, a law firm management expert has said as he stressed the need for them to adopt the ‘agile’ methodology.

A law firm specialising only in contentious probate has secured £3.25m in private equity funding to boost expansion across the country, the fifth law firm to be backed by BGF.

Confidence among smaller law firms that they will grow in the coming year has fallen for the third year running and they are planning to increase their marketing efforts in response.

Private equity firm Blixt Group is looking at up to five more acquisitions to reach its target of building a £100m national legal services business, its chief executive has revealed.