In-house
Interview
FTSE Group head
of legal Shazanna
Safdar-Karim 16
THE LAWYER
City Mipim comes thudding down to earth 11
Feature Life after redundancy for City associates 14
Special Reports Central & Eastern Europe/China 20/29
VOL 23 ISSUE 12 WWW.THELAWYER.COM 23 MARCH 2009 £2.95
At last, City firms could get their own regulator
By Katy Dowell
CORPORATE firms should
be governed separately to
the rest of the profession, a
Law Society report into the
regulation of the legal
profession is expected to
recommend this week.
Tods Murray
chief slams
insolvency
rumours
By Margaret Taylor
TODS Murray executive
partner David Dunsire has
publicly defended his firm
in a letter to a Sunday newspaper
in an unprecedented
attempt to scotch damaging
rumours about the legal
industry, and his firm in
particular.
Dunsire said he wrote the
letter after receiving countless
enquiries from staff and
clients about rumours that
the firm was in financial
difficulty and on the verge of
going into administration.
Dunsire wrote: “We’ve
heard that we’re on our
bank’s ‘at risk’ register, that
partners have refused to
inject more cash into the
firm and that we are, indeed,
about to go into administration.
All of this is totally
untrue.”
Dunsire told The Lawyer
that although 17 staff have
been laid off and partners
injected capital in January,
the firm is financially secure.
THIS WEEK
The Law Society commissioned
former Ministry of
Justice civil servant Nick
Smedley to conduct a review
on whether large corporate
firms and high street
firms should be regulated
differently.
The report, which is
By Kit Chellel
SLAUGHTER and May has
billed the Government more
than £22m since the start
of the credit crunch, pocketing
£4m in a single month
at the height of the crisis.
The figures, released
to The Lawyer under the
Freedom of Information Act,
reveal that the Treasury has
spent £22.2m of taxpayers’
money on the City firm since
November 2007 – an average
of £1.6m a month.
It is understood that up to
12 partners were needed to
work on Treasury mandates
at busy times.
A Slaughters partner said
the firm had worked on a
“complex and unprecedented
sequence of matters” for the
Government, adding: “Our
fees have been competitive
and reflective of the value
added in highly novel
circumstances.”
expected to be published on
Thursday (26 March),
will recommend that the
Solicitors Regulation
Authority (SRA) establishes
a ‘City work regulators’ division
aimed at overseeing
firms handling complex
work and with developed
The firm has been the
Treasury’s source of legal
counsel throughout the
nationalisation of Northern
Rock, the Icelandic banking
crisis and the bank recapitalisation
programme. Last
week, in a report by the
National Audit Office (NAO),
it emerged that the firm had
billed £9.4m during the
collapse and nationalisation
of Northern Rock.
The highest figure the
firm billed the Government
in a single month, £4m in
risk management systems.
The City of London Law
Society (CLLS), which
prompted the Law Society
review, would welcome such
a move.
Clifford Chance general
counsel Chris Perrin, who
leads the CLLS’s regulatory
Slaughters hands
Treasury £22m bill
November 2008, came
shortly after the Government’s
first rescue package
for the UK banking system.
Slaughters lawyers were
central to negotiations with
the banks, with partners
Nigel Boardman and Nilufer
von Bismarck present
at the late-night Downing
Street meeting last October
that secured the bailout.
Slaughters has ties with
the Treasury going back to
the 1990s privatisations.
Partner Charles Randell
Eversheds overhauls
Litigation silk joins
# bar strategy # Thirteen Old Square #
committee, said: “We’ve
been pushing for a resource
in the SRA which is fully
able to look after City firms.”
The report will feed into a
wider regulatory review
currently being carried out
by Lord David Hunt on
behalf of the Law Society.
Firm defends ‘competitive’ fees on Northern Rock and bank bailout package
Litigation head slashes
chambers list by 75 3
£m
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
Nov
07
Dec
07
Jan
08
SLAUGHTERS’ TREASURY FEES
Feb
08
Mar
08
QC quits Erskine to focus
on litigation work 5
Amount (including VAT and disbursements)
Apr
08
May
08
Jun
08
Jul
08
Aug
08
Sept
08
Oct
08
Nov
08
Dec
08
Jan
09
Feb
09
now leads the relationship.
The Treasury would not
reveal Slaughters’ hourly
rates or any alternative fee
arrangements. However, the
NAO report revealed that
Slaughters used a pre-agreed
hourly rate on Northern
Rock, with a 15 per cent
mark-up for on-call advice.
A statement from the
department said releasing
this information would
prejudice the commercial
interests of both Slaughters
and the Treasury.
Legal market redundancy
toll hits 2,751
Job cuts continue as
consultations end 7
Firms line up
for London
councils’
joint panel
By Kit Chellel
LAW FIRMS have begun
the scramble to win
contracts from the London
Boroughs Legal Alliance
(LBLA), a scheme that
could eventually see all
London councils served by a
single panel.
The LBLA currently has
six members, which will
share in-house expertise
and use a shared panel.
The London boroughs of
Camden, Hammersmith &
Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon
and Hounslow have
signed up, along with
the West London Waste
Authority.
The Lawyer understands
that other councils, including
Hackney, have also
expressed an interest.
Harrow head of legal
Hugh Peart said he hoped
all 33 boroughs would
ultimately join the LBLA,
adding: “We want to
develop this as a network for
the whole of London. Why
wouldn’t you want to
do this?”
The alliance has been
inundated with applications
for places on the three
sub-panels, each consisting
of four firms and covering
major projects and
litigation, high-volume and
general overflow work.
It is expected that members
will drop existing panels
to benefit from more competitive
rates, although this
has not yet been decided.
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