Law Firms

The move highlights the difficulties that the large accountancy firms face in trying to retain tax work revenues following last year’s clampdown on the non-audit services they can offer audit clients. Regulators and politicians became concerned in the wave of corporate scandal that the independence of audits was being jeopardised by accountancy firms gaining lucrative […]

Rationalisation and consolidation have been the hallmarks of the year in New Zealand, as the drift of corporate head offices to Australia has forced practices to meet the challenge of ever increasing competition within a shrinking domestic market. “I’d say the market in New Zealand has been a lot more competitive for a lot longer

Hammonds’ average profits per partner have slumped 18 per cent from £330,000 to £272,000. Turnover for 2003-2004 is down 1 per cent to £136m, which includes a £7.1m loss of revenue due to the departure of the entire commercial insurance team at the beginning of the last financial year. Senior partner Richard Burns said: “We

Berwin Leighton Paisner walked away with the prestigious, Law Firm of the Year award but the biggest cheer of the evening went to the winners of the Public Sector Team of the Year Award: the Hutton Inquiry team. It was that inquiry which had “ruined the summer” of the host for the evening, Tony Blair’s

Linklaters has been hit by another wave of partner defections to US firms after losing highly rated structured finance expert Richard Hughes to Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. At the same time, Latham & Watkins’ Paris office has taken a second capital markets partner from Linklaters in little over a year with the hire of

The quality of a journalist’s notetaking took centre stage in a court case yesterday that will determine whether a City firm can proceed with a £230m libel action against the Financial Times. Lawyers acting for Collins Stewart Tullett, which is suing the FT over an article published in August 2003, tried to persuade Tony Tassell

After three months of talks, Boston-based Ropes & Gray and New York intellectual property firm Fish & Neave have decided to join forces. The leaders of the two firms said Monday that they expect to merge around the end of the year. While 150-lawyer Fish & Neave will be absorbed into the 580-attorney Ropes &

John G. Rowland, who stepped down as Connecticut’s governor last summer in the face of impeachment, pleaded guilty today to a single federal charge of criminal conspiracy. In the plea agreement, Mr. Rowland admitted to defrauding the Internal Revenue Service by failing to report gratuities, and to defrauding the people of Connecticut by failing to

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s decision to slash White & Case’s legal fee in a bankruptcy-related case from $5.5 million to $1.8 million, criticizing the firm’s fees as excessive. “White & Case has not persuaded us that it is entitled to so much more than the attorneys on

Both are former federal prosecutors, formidable in their courtrooms. They are also fast friends, contemporaries who rose through the legal ranks in New York City during the gritty 1970’s and the more prosperous 1980’s. And, for the next few months, Denise L. Cote, 58, and Barbara S. Jones, 57, United States District Court judges in