City Exclusive – Criminal barristers lured to law firms as strikes set to escalate August 19, 2022 City law firms are making concerted efforts to capitalise on the collapse of the criminal justice system by hiring disgruntled barristers into their firms, recruiters and law firms exclusively told Morning Wire Legal sector recruiters said they’ve seen a sharp uptick in law firms approaching them seeking to bolster their teams by hiring criminal [...]
UK government must release details on Rwanda’s human rights record, court rules August 17, 2022 The UK government must publish six out of ten extracts from internal documents relating to Rwanda’s human rights record after the government sought to withhold them from the public, the High Court ruled today. Lord Justice Clive Lewis said the majority of the ten extracts should be made public after the government argued publishing them [...]
Harrods threatens to become first major employer to use agency staff as strikebreakers August 16, 2022 The staffing agency industry’s trade body has hit out at Harrods after the luxury department store threatened to take advantage of new laws allowing it to break strikes using temporary workers. Harrods told its staff it is willing to use temporary workers to keep its shop running after employees at the Knightsbridge shop threatened to [...]
Mishcon de Reya spent £12m on shelved London IPO August 16, 2022 Mishcon de Reya spent almost £12m in readying itself to list on the London Stock Exchange, before shelving its initial public offering (IPO) in June. In a Companies House filing, the law firm said it spend more than £11.7m on preparing for its IPO before calling the public float off for the “foreseeable future due [...]
Freshfields calls lawyers back into the office for at least three days a week August 15, 2022 Magic Circle law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has upped the minimum number of days it expects its lawyers to come to the office from two-and-a-half to three days a week. Lawyers working at the Magic Circle firm’s London and Manchester businesses will now be expected to work from the office for at least three [...]
Big Four accountancy firms capture larger share of UK legal market August 15, 2022 Major corporations are snubbing traditional law firms in increasingly going to consultancies and accounting firms for legal advice, according to new research from Thomson Reuters. The Big Four accounting firms – PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte – are driving growth in the alternative legal services provider (ASLP) sector, as UK corporates increasingly turn to them [...]
UK’s professional services sector weathers economic headwinds August 13, 2022 The UK’s professional services sector has continued to grow its turnovers in the face of major economic headwinds, new UK government data shows. The accountancy sector’s turnovers increased 3.7 per cent, from £3.41bn in May to £3.54bn in June, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows. The country’s legal sector also saw its turnovers [...]
Law Society calls for ‘sustained investment’ in courts to cut worsening case backlog August 13, 2022 The Law Society has called on the government to make “sustained investment” in the UK’s court system after new data showed the case backlog has gotten worse over the previous quarter. The backlog of cases waiting to be heard in the England and Wales Crown Courts has increased from 58,540 in April to 58,973 in [...]
Magistrates court workers vote to strike over digital system August 11, 2022 Members of the union representing Magistrates’ court workers today voted in favour of plans to strike over complaints about the digitalization of England and Wales’ court systems. Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) are calling on the government to reconsider its plans to digitalise the courts through the launch of its Common Platform. [...]
Jones Day ups pay for new lawyers to £140,000 a year August 11, 2022 US law firm Jones Day is set to give its newly-qualified (NQ) lawyers 27 per cent pay rises in upping their annual salaries to heights of £140,000 a year. NQ lawyers working in Jones Day’s London offices will see their salaries surge beyond those paid out to those in the Magic Circle in seeing their [...]