Legal spend is the second-largest ‘cost centre’ for £21bn global banking giant Barclays. This tantalising statement is in the bank’s 2018 Request for Quotation document, sent to law firms ahead of its final panel review this year and seen by The In-House Lawyer. The document provides detail on what Barclays describes as this ‘sizeable’ legal …
The asymmetric approach King Pyrrhus of Epirus famously said: ‘If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.’ He was talking in 279 BC about the large number of soldiers he had lost in the battle of Asculum, but today he could just as easily have been referring to …
Technology is at the heart of the legal sector’s current, well-publicised drive for innovation. With the demands placed on in-house legal teams increasing, and legal budgets trending downwards, the pressure on outside counsel to provide genuine value to their corporate clients has never been greater.
Leading a global legal team is a complex role and many general counsel could be forgiven for spending all their energy just trying to get the job done. Not so at Michelin. Despite overseeing a legal community of 200 members, comprising lawyers, patent engineers, paralegals and admin staff, spread across 20 countries, group GC Benoit …
Retail and insolvency The increasing popularity of online shopping has resulted in a decline of footfall on the high street and rising business rates, wages and pension costs have resulted in a tough trading environment. With well-known retailers such as Toys R Us, Prezzo, Carpetright, New Look, Mothercare, House of Fraser and recently Homebase all …
‘A good general counsel should do three things,’ says National Grid’s Alison Kay: ‘Manage the legal requirements of the business, manage their people and manage their budget.’ But as managing the legal requirements of a large business becomes more time consuming, GCs are increasingly finding it difficult to pay adequate attention to costs and staff.
‘There’s a palpable sense of innovation in the legal industry,’ says Casey Flaherty, founder of legal technology consultancy Procertas. ‘But then,’ he adds, ‘there always has been.’
For general counsel struggling to manage the administrative and regulatory burdens of the role, a head of operations has become the must-have accessory. In the US, the growth of legal ops is demonstrated by statistics.
Nailing the issue of what makes a high-performing in-house function, with the emphasis on operational sophistication, has become the Holy Grail for general counsel.
The penultimate session of the 2018 Commercial Litigation Summit drew a large audience to hear the views of the most important players in a major dispute – GCs and senior in-house counsel. This debate featured a panel of two private practice litigators – Jenner & Block’s Jason Yardley and Simon Bushell from Signature Litigation, and …
Since late August 2018, against a backdrop of growing concern over the prospects for the Brexit negotiations as the clock ticks down, the UK has published batches of ‘Technical Notices’1 on the steps it is taking, and what steps organisations and individuals should consider taking, to prepare for the possibility of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. …
Edward Murray, 60, co-founded Allen & Overy (A&O)’s derivatives practice in 1991 while still a senior associate and was until 2013 the senior partner in its derivatives and structured finance group. On 1 October, The Honourable Mr Justice Murray became one of only three solicitors in history to be appointed directly from private practice as …