The Lawyer

THE LAWYER 30 MARCH 2009

Latham’s City revenue takes 12.8 per cent hit

By Julia Berris

LATHAM & Watkins’ London office reported a 12.8 per cent drop in revenue for the last financial year. The US firm reported a revenue of $150m (£105m) for London, down from $172m (£118.39m) during the 2007 financial year. By contrast, US rival Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom boosted its City revenue by 5 per cent, up from $130m (£89.48m) at the end of 2007 to $137m (£94.3m) at the end of 2008. The news comes after Latham reported a big drop in profit per equity partner for 2008, from $2.27m (£1.56m) to $1.8m (£1.24m). TheLawyer.com reported (27 February) that the US firm had announced layoffs totalling 440 employees – 190 associates and 250 support staff. Last year Skadden underlined its commitment to London by creating four new practice groups, including tax controversy, financial services, investment funds and corporate investigations.

By Katy Dowell

LITIGATION boutique Stewarts Law has hired a partner apiece from Manches and Withers as it bids to compete with them in the family sphere. The firm, which hired Stephen Foster from Lester Aldridge to launch its family practice in 2006, has hired divorce partners Debbie Chism and Emma Hatley from Manches and Withers respectively. “There’s room at the top for a new player,” said Foster, who heads the family practice. “If [Manches and Withers] are the Oxford and Cambridge of divorce, we want to be the new world equivalent – Harvard.” One Manches partner said

An increasing amount of international litigation requires expert advice and coordination between the world’s financial centres and the BVI Margaret Robertson, Withers

Withers dips its toe in Virgin territory

By Katy Dowell

WITHERS is set to make its first foray into the offshore legal sphere with the launch of a British Virgin Islands (BVI) office, The Lawyer can reveal. Withers managing director Margaret Robertson said the firm had launched the office because an increasing amount of international litigation, such as insolvency litigation and fraud and asset tracing, involves a BVI offshore component. “This in turn requires expert advice and coordination between the world’s

Stewarts in family way with two hires

Chism was widely regarded as a rising star, adding that she is “someone who’s well connected and likeable”. Chism and Hatley co-founded England’s first collaborative divorce partnership to involve multidisciplined professionals in 2007. Chism said she joined

If they’re the Oxford and Cambridge, we want to be Harvard Stephen Foster, Stewarts Law

Stewarts to take up the opportunity of working with Hatley and Foster. At the 2007-08 year-end Stewarts had the largest rise in turnover in The Lawyer’s UK 200, with revenue rising by 54 per cent.

financial centres and the island itself,” she added. Robertson said the office would be ideally located to deal with global litigation that is intrinsically connected to proceedings in London, Switzerland and Hong Kong, where the firm already has presences. Withers will relocate litigation partner Jeremy Scott and funds, investments, tax and trusts partner John Greenwood to the BVI from the London office. Greenwood joined the firm in 2007 from offshore giant Appleby, where he was managing director

By Katy Dowell

THE HIGH Court has thrown out a £17m claim brought against Fladgate Fielder by Land Securities. The multimillion-pound claim was brought after Fladgate sought to bring a judicial review of a planning application for a major development in London’s West End. The property company aimed to recover damages for losses caused by delays and uncertainties brought about by the judicial review applications. In a witness statement, Land Securities London portfolio director Mark Hussey alleged that the firm “plainly had in mind” the possibility of getting a financial “windfall” because

for Appleby Corporate Services. Many offshore firms have seen significant increases in instructions coming directly from clients, as opposed to onshore firms. This move by Withers is one way of shoring up its offshore credentials and keeping hold of clients that would otherwise use offshore firms. Robertson said Withers had no plans to further expand its offshore office network, having already hired Cayman Islands specialist Ziva Robertson from offshore firm Mourant du Feu & Jeune in January.

Fladgate triumphs in £17m planning row

of its negotiating position with the developer. Fladgate argued that it would face “three years of hell” from the development, which could negatively impact on the firm’s turnover by as much as 25 per cent. Judge Bernard Livesey QC dismissed the claim, saying that Hussey’s assertion that Fladgate was actively looking for a contribution to its relocation costs was “an interesting insight into the confidence [Hussey] has in his ability to read other people’s minds, [and] is not admissible evidence”. Earlier this year Eversheds and Cobbetts settled respective negligence claims brought by Nationwide and Cheshire Building Society for advice on allegedly fraudulent property deals.

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NEWS 3

LEADER Keep calm and carry on

Catrin Griffiths, editor

Ever since the onset of the recession there’s been talk of a paradigm shift within the law. We’re devoting some space to the issue this week. In our feature on page 16 Matt Byrne interviews managing partners of mainly transatlantic firms for their views. But that’s not the whole story: we wanted to balance this with the views from London-headquartered firms with largely domestic practices. How pleasurable, then, to hear such sanguine responses from the Brits. And about time too. I particularly liked the stoicism shown by Macfarlanes senior partner Charles Martin, who says: “We’ve got a job to do and a responsibility to deliver in terms of supporting the economic activity which is going to get us out of this recession.” So leverage is not dead. The notion that law firms are suddenly going to ditch the pyramid model is, on this showing, misplaced. There is a shift of sorts: law firms have relied on attrition, and there isn’t much of that at the moment, so it has to be forced. Equally, the fact that associates generate the money in the boom and partners generate the money in the downturn might appear at first glance to give associates much less of a stake in the future of the business. But I’m not sure this is the case at all. All law firm leaders are still desperate to hang on to their best people, and most of them aren’t going to start slashing into their junior lawyer hiring programmes. Redundancies are painful, but there are good reasons why they had to do it. And it isn’t all about protecting partner profits, either, although that is undoubtedly an element. It’s about preserving that most vital of qualities: energy. Having dozens of people in a department with nothing to do is terrible, both for business and for lawyers’ self-esteem. As I’ve argued before, the greatest danger facing UK law firms is stasis. So how excellent to recap on this year’s expansionist moves: SJ Berwin launching in Asia; LG and BLP opening in Moscow; Olswang beefing up in Berlin; Ashurst launching in New York; and Dentons forging ahead with its Africa practice. There’s no need to assume that every law firm will have to retrench dramatically. Chins up. #catrin.griffiths@thelawyer.com

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