Law Firms

Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters, however, have all confirmed to Lawyer 2B that they will not be following the rival magic circle firm’s lead, and that newly-qualifieds’ pay will remain static at £50,000. With SJ Berwin, Clifford Chance was the instigator of the 2000 salary war, as UK firms sought to rival […]

One Essex Court head Lord Grabiner QC is set to earn £3 million while his arch rival, Essex Court Chambers Gordon Pollock QC, is tied up in the ongoing BCCI trial. Pollock, who is devoted to representing BCCI’s liquidators against the Bank of England until at least 2005, has commanded a £3m brief fee, putting

TV producer David E. Kelley, an outspoken opponent of “reality” television, has bowed to the genre’s popularity by developing a drama with real lawyers, Daily Variety said in its Wednesday edition. Kelley, who will serve as a consulting producer, will create a law firm whose members will try real civil cases through binding arbitration overseen

The European Union on Friday dropped money-laundering and smuggling claims against Philip Morris International in a $1.25bn settlement it claimed could herald similar deals with other tobacco companies. The EU legal team, which is pursuing RJ Reynolds and Japan Tobacco in the US courts, believes the deal with the makers of Marlboro cigarettes is a

North Korea has taken a further tentative step on its economic reform path after it allowed the country’s first law firm to open on a Pyongyang square named after the communist state’s founder, Kim Il-sung. British lawyer-turned-consultant Michael Hay told four foreign reporters the firm he jointly owns with an outfit spun off from an

Promoters pay radio stations annual fees for advance copies of playlists and bill record companies for each new song played, running up a tab that costs the industry tens of millions of dollars annually. Financial woes and piracy have caused the labels to cut back on such payments. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi escaped conviction in a major corruption trial on Friday after a court invoked a statute of limitations that meant time had run out to sentence him for bribery. Berlusconi welcomed the verdict, which brought down the curtain on a trial that lasted almost five years, saying he had always expected

A merger between the Boston-based Ropes and Gray law firm with Fish and Neave, a law firm with offices in New York and Washington DC, has been finalized. Ropes and Gray Chairman Bradford Malt perviously said the merger would create a powerful new resource for its clients. The combined firms will employ 750 lawyers and

The commander of three British servicemen accused of mistreating Iraqi detainees testified Friday that he told soldiers to make their prisoners “work hard” picking up garbage but saw no abuse. A Danish army captain and four military police sergeants, meanwhile, were formally charged with mistreating Iraqi detainees at a military camp near Basra last year.

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales won U.S. Senate confirmation on Thursday as the nation’s next attorney general, but recorded the second highest number of “no” votes for a successful nominee for the post. The Republican-led Senate rejected Democrats’ complaints that he helped craft policies that contributed to the torture of foreign detainees and approved him