One major firm, Allen & Overy (A&O), has controversially emerged as an adviser to more than one party in three separate instructions this year: the insolvency of TXU, advertising giant WPPs bid for Cordiant and the on-going battle to control UK supermarket group Safeway. A&O has strongly denied any wrong-doing, but a growing number of […]

Barlows has handled more reported negligence claims against law firms and solicitors in the past 12 months than any other firm. It acts for four London City firms and regularly receives instructions from three out of the five main legal insurers (The St Paul, Zurich and QBE), as well as the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF)

The Judge ruled that Lady Archer, 58 was entitled to a wide-ranging injunction against Jane Williams, her employee for 13 years until November 2001, and damages of £2,500. He said Lady Archer was not “a public figure” whose activities could be scrutinised in the public interest. Lady Archer alleged that Ms Williams, 49, was the

Lawyer-turned-property investor Peter Cooper vanished from New Zealand nearly 15 years ago with hardly a trace. The sharemarket crash had ruined his businesses and opportunities, so he picked up where he left off as a schoolboy. At 38, he decided to try his luck again in the United States, but this time with wife Sue

A landmark legal battle is looming over the use of the word “spam” by companies offering junk email blocking services. Hormel Foods, the makers of the luncheon meat made famous by a Monty Python sketch, is challenging a Seattle-based technology firm that wants to trademark “Spam Arrest” – the name of its software for email

Merrill Lynch & Co.’s top lawyer is confident that remaining class-action lawsuits against the firm brought by investors who lost money during the dot-com boom of 1990s will be dismissed, according to an internal memo obtained by Reuters on Thursday. Rosemary Berkery, Merrill’s general counsel, offered the assessment to staff in an e-mail Wednesday afternoon

Oklahoma City securities lawyer A. Daniel Woska has never seen a year like this before. Usually, the arbitration expert handles 20 to 50 cases a year for disgruntled investors seeking to recover their stock market losses from Wall Street firms. This year, Woska and a Houston firm have already teamed up to handle 330 complaints,

10.6 percent was the rate of profit growth at Am Law 100 firms in 1999, the last full year of the stock market boom. But the 1.5 percent figure is wrong, too. That was the rate of profit growth at Am Law 100 firms in 1992, the last time the economy languished in the second

The latest claims — which are being brought against the firm by intranet projects manager Shazia Wahab — were reaching the close of an employment tribunal. Wahab has made two separate claims against the firm for discrimination covering sex and race, and discrimination against her as a part-time employee. The Department of Trade & Industry

The Top 20 Firms Last Years Rank 1. Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, New York 1 2. Cravath Swaine & Moore, New York 2 3. Sullivan & Cromwell, New York 3 4. Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, New York 4 5. Jones Day, Cleveland 6 6. Baker & McKenzie, Chicago 7 7. Davis Polk