Norma Harris

Norton Rose Partners Just Pocketed a 27% Payday – Blame the US (and a Bit of AI Magic)

Big Law, Briefings, Law Firms /
jeff cody fulbright norton rose

While the rest of Big Law was still muttering about market uncertainty, Norton Rose Fulbright quietly had one of those years that makes equity partners smile into their morning flat white.

The firm racked up more than US$2.8 billion in global gross revenue for 2025 – a tidy 16% jump. But the real headline? Profits per equity partner shot up 27% to nearly US$2.1 million. You read that right. Nearly $2.1 million. Per partner. Per year.

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UK Greenlights LawFairy: The Deterministic Tech-Only Law Firm That Actually Follows the Rules (No Hallucinations Allowed)

Law Firms, Legal AI, UK Law /

Forget probabilistic guesswork – this London outfit promises auditable, flight-simulator precision for rule-heavy work like immigration. Second tech-led firm to clear the regulator after Garfield.Law, but the first to bet everything on verifiable legal logic rather than clever chatbots. The UK Solicitors Regulation Authority has just done something quietly revolutionary – it has authorised a

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Mishcon de Reya – From Mandelson Brief to Battle Stations

Headlining, Law Firms, UK Law /
Mandelson arrest - lawfuel - Image: ABC

For the law firm managing the defence of Peter Mandleson — Mishcon de Reya — today’s arrest represents a decisive escalation. What began as a high-profile reputation management brief has become one of the most significant criminal defence instructions in the firm’s history.

Mishcon de Reya was first reported to be representing Mandelson by The Lawyer earlier this month, with Johanna Walsh (pictured) head of the firm’s white-collar crime and investigations practice, leading the team.

The choice of Walsh, recognised by Legal 500 as a first-tier practitioner in serious and organised crime and by Who’s Who Legal as a Global Leader in Investigations, signalled from the outset that Mandelson and his advisers anticipated criminal exposure well before today’s arrest.

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Microsoft’s Copilot AI Read Your Confidential Emails — And Lawyers Should Be Paying Attention

Briefings, Featured, Law Firms, Press Releases /

A security flaw that allowed Microsoft’s AI assistant to bypass privacy safeguards and summarise confidential emails is more than a tech inconvenience. For law firms and legal departments, it is a wake-up call. Microsoft has confirmed that a bug in its Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat tool allowed the AI assistant to access and summarise emails

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Law Firm Retention Bonuses 2026: How Much Firms Are Really Paying to Keep Their Associates

Briefings, Featured, Law Firms, Law Job News /
law firm associate retention bonuses

The war for legal talent never really ended. It just got more expensive with big law partner pay hitting record levels, but law firm retention bonuses becoming increasingly important as talent retention retains top level importance for law firms. While headline-grabbing salary bumps and biglaw salary information dominate the conversation, the quieter – and often

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Women In Law Firm Leadership: The Stubborn 20% Ceiling That Won’t Crack

Briefings, Featured, Lawyers, Power Law, US Law /

The legal profession has a mathematics problem. Women now constitute the majority of law school graduates, comprise over half of associates at major firms, and represent 47% of all lawyers globally.

Yet when the elevator reaches the executive floor, the numbers tell a different story: just two in ten law firm leaders are women (although when they do reach the top women legal leaders are making a difference).

The latest research from the International Bar Association’s Raising the Bar: Women in Law project confirms what many practitioners have long suspected – the profession is experiencing a spectacular leakage of female talent somewhere between the mid-career mark and the managing partner’s office.

The Numbers That Should Keep Managing Partners Awake

The IBA’s December 2024 Progress Report, synthesizing data from 11 countries across five continents, reveals the uncomfortable arithmetic:

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Kirkland Loses Elite Energy Makers as Paul Weiss Goes on Offense

Big Law, Featured, US Law /

Paul Weiss Goes to Houston And The Energy Talent War Just Escalated When Paul Weiss just poached senior energy M&A dealmakers from Kirkland & Ellis and promptly announced a strategic push into Houston, this was not a polite handshake between firms but a major shakeup with weaponized intent. Paul Weiss, fresh from the headline-making resignation

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The Fastest Growing Personal Injury Law Firms in America

Best Firms, Featured, Law Firm Rankings, US Law /

6 Personal Injury Law Firm Leaders Norma Harris, LawFuel contributing writer America’s fastest‑growing personal injury firms are no longer just winning cases, they’re scaling like growth companies, blending national marketing, AI‑driven operations, and Inc. 5000‑level revenue trajectories in what remains a relatively slow‑growth legal sector. Personal injury remains a solid but unspectacular growth segment, with

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Gibson Dunn Storms Spain With Star Dealmaker Armando Albarrán to Lead Madrid Launch

Big Law, Press Releases /
Armadno-Albarran-LawFuel

Gibson Dunn is planting its flag in Spain, and it’s doing it the only way Big Law knows how – by hiring the country’s most decorated dealmaker and building an office around him.

The firm has confirmed that Armando Albarrán, widely regarded as Spain’s premier private equity and M&A lawyer, is joining as a partner, triggering the launch of Gibson Dunn’s Madrid office. It is not a symbolic outpost. This is a full-blooded expansion of the Gibson Dunn’s European transactional machine.

Albarrán arrives with a reputation that does the heavy lifting. He is Band 1 across the board at Chambers for Capital Markets, Corporate/M&A and Private Equity, and has advised on many of Spain’s most consequential domestic and cross-border transactions. Log in to read the story . . .

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Inside AlphaLit – The Legal Tech AI Startup Rewiring Legal Intake and Access to Justice

Briefings, Featured, Legal AI /
AlphaLit legal tech startup story

AlphaLit’s seed round is more than another legal tech funding story, but is a shot across the bow of the traditional plaintiffs’ bar and a live case study in how voice AI and claims scoring could rewire the economics of “small” litigation.​

For most plaintiffs’ firms, high-volume, lower-dollar matters remain structurally unattractive.

Intake on smaller civil claims is labour-intensive, non-billable, and often delegated to over-stretched staff, which makes it hard to justify the time spent on leads that rarely convert into seven-figure wins.​
AlphaLit points to a brutal funnel – roughly 64 percent of calls from potential plaintiffs never get a substantive response, leaving an estimated 55 million meritorious civil claims unfiled each year, particularly in working-class communities.

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