Home » Posts tagged 'corporate law'
Tag Archives: corporate law
A day in the life of LegalAware
I had a very relaxing weekend. Boy, did I deserve it. I completed my BPP MBA written assessments in strategy, systems and operations, which gives us the skills to deconstruct corporate strategy and the efficacy of operations management. I sat the written paper in Holborn over about 3 hours, in which I was invited to write about how corporate social responsibility could be incorporated in strategy, and to what extent it benefited all stakeholders, and the case study which invited me to look at the competitive advantage of Spotify. The leadership examination was enjoyable too. I was asked to submit on a case study of change management in the NHS, implementing knowledge management. This was a joy for me as I had read the NHS Innovation and Improvement guidelines carefully, and I knew exactly the evidence base for their recommendations including some excellent papers from the Harvard Business Review.
So, on Saturday, I went to Cachao in Regent’s Park Road, here in Primrose Hill, to listen to tracks on my iPad, including ‘Suddenly I see’ by KT Tunstall, a song which has especial significance for me as ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is a film that I strongly associate with, and ‘I was glad’ because I remember this booming out when I was sitting in Westminster Abbey as a Queen’s Scholar of Westminster School. As a disabled guy, I find the Cachao building itself very pleasant, and I have no difficulty in getting around. I was in fact featured this week in an article by Alex Aldridge of the Guardian on disability, discrimination and the law.
There, Sue and John were working tirelessly, in an incredibly smart and efficient coffee shop. Sue prepared an amazing ‘special’ which was terriyaki salmon on a bed of fresh salad. The dressing was amazing, but I can’t place what oil Sue used in fact – was it sesame oil?
Jenny also was there, albeit briefly – her toy shop directly next door is wonderful, especially if you have any toddlers whom you wish to spoil! I enjoyed reading a wonderful article on mental illness and leadership in the Financial Times by Christopher Caldwell (published Saturday), as well as an interesting article on the overproduction of barristers in the US (“overlawyered“) . I had a chance also to buy a copy of ‘Ecological Intelligence‘ which I glanced at, but I so much disagree with what Daniel Goleman has said, in parts, about emotional intelligence.
I will in fact be submitting a paper on the importance of cognitive and emotional interactions for management and leadership with my lecturer from BPP Business School (who also is a lecturer at Queen Mary and Westfield College Faculty of Business, of the University of London). This I feel is a glaring omission of Goleman’s construct, and my co-author has some excellent thoughts about how we may approach the paper. I will submit the paper to the Annual Review of Management around November, and I had the pleasure of running my theory past Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, my first ever proper supervisor during my decade at the University of Cambridge, last week during a busy time for me. Simon, at the University of Cambridge, advised me that possibly the only person who would disagree with my theory is Daniel Goleman, but hey, rock and roll! Simon has been acting professionally in advising my twitter friend and fellow Scot, Janis Sharp, mum of Gary McKinnon – Simon is an important world-expert in autism and the Asperger syndrome spectrum.
So, now, it’s business as usual. I am going to do the 500 pp proofs of my latest postgraduate textbook to be published on October 6th, and think in passing how brain-dead legal recruiters are. And I forgot – my 2 week holiday officially starts today, but I love my life anyway. I hope to listen to the Brandenburg Concertos again, a new purchase in my iPad2!
Commercial awareness application form question: marketing strategy for an international corporate law firm office
Imagine that as part of its strategy to become a law firm of truly international reach [name of a well-known international corporate law firm] are opening a new European office. Rank in order of importance which of the following factors would be most important when marketing this new office to clients?
1 = most important; 10 = least important
Ambition of the law firm
Fee charges
Knowledge of the client’s market
Legal expertise
Level of client service
Location of offices
Internal working relationships
Range of expertise available
Reputation of the firm
Size of the firm
To enter your answer: please use the following link.
Please feel to comment below as well.
I love the City
I actually love the City! My father used to wonder why I loved the City so much, during those dark days when I was working 80 hours a week for the NHS and hated it. Sure – the guys work hard in the City, but it’s just so much my kind of work. I am fully committed to my dementia research work, but I am very lucky I can do it ‘from a safe distance’. I am internationally well respected as one of the only experts in frontal variant frontotemporal dementia, and I wouldn’t change that in the world!
But I love the way the City thrives on teamwork to get results. The law has some extremely bright, charismatic, people on it who can understand the competitive advantage of their transactions, and can understand how to make them work even considering complicated extra-jurisdictional issues. When I travel to my Business School, I have an enormous sense of pride – especially so on a hot summer’s day for some reason. Indeed, the City reminds me of my happy days at Cambridge as a student (I was there for a decade), and especially my father.
Thank you
Many thanks to those people who responded to our advert below (here is the link to the original site). We’re pleased report that we now have appointed quite a few additional writers, as requested, but please feel to contact me on Twitter should you be interested in writing with us.
Hi
Applications are now open for occasional article writers to a blog on corporate law. There will be no fixed demand for articles. If you’re generally interested in law, and like to read relevant media such as the BBC Business page, the Times Law Reports, Legal Week, The Lawyer, or Lawyer2be, this might genuinely interest you.
We are looking above all for good communicators.
The blog has just been launched, but posts are regularly advertised on Twitter to our 560 followers. Followers include law firms and legal journalists.
The blog is here: http://legal-aware.org/
Whilst this blog is the official site of the independent Legal Awareness Society run by student members at BPP for all members of BPP, we welcome applications from law students at other schools.
This is a student-run society of BPP. BPP is one of the leading legal education providers in England. Our blog emphasises core strengths of BPP education, including law, finance, business and extra-curricular activities such as pro bono.
The aim of the blog is to raise awareness of commercial law issues to a business community and to law students themselves.
Immediate start.
Applicants are welcome from any law student, particularly those doing the GDL or LPC, or LLM.
If you’re interested, please provide us with an email address with a brief description of your motivation and educational background ; we’d be grateful if you could make any applications as soon as possible. Please also don’t hesitate to contact us if you should like to make an informal enquiry.
It would be helpful if you could state whether you have any preference for writing on any of the following topics:
general law news
arbitration
climate change and the law
competition
corporate social responsibility
debt finance
e-commerce
employment and pensions
insurance
intellectual property
IPOs and rights issues
Islamic finance
joint ventures
share aquisitions
technology and the media
We are particularly keen to involve law students who wish to demonstrate commercial awareness and/or teamwork skills in corporate law training contract applications this year. However, please do contact us also if you’d rather be a barrister than a solicitor, or if you have a stronger interest in other areas of law. For example, we regularly post on privacy, so an interest in human rights would be desirable by us.
Thank you.
Allen & Overy LLP win the best recruiter for a large law firm 2011 award from LawCareersNetUK
These were tweeted last night. Many congratulations to the firms below – and to those also who were not official winners. Corporate law firms in England are outstanding, and the UK is very lucky to benefit from such talent working closely with their high-profile (and low-profile) business clients. Some highlights are for large LLP firms in the : DLA Piper (diversity), Mills & Reeve and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (work placement), Wragge & Co and Baker & McKenzie (trainer), and Allen & Overy (recruiter).
Will opposites attract?
Lawyers in training often become bewildered as to how parts of their course ultimately gel together. This possibly contributes to their uncertainty in choosing which part of the law to specialise in. For example, how on earth does constitutional law, including the rule of law and human rights, relate to the different specialisms of law, such as immigration or housing? And what have they got to do with the big powerhouse corporate law firms, if anything?
A surprising fusion of these ingredients could hold the key to solving a different problem that has been vexing English and Welsh law for several decades, at least. That is, the issue of what to do about the provision of legal aid.
A community law centre, where the lawyer might examine a sensitive landlord-tenant dispute, may seem ‘worlds-apart’ from the work of a corporate lawyer, who may be advising on a multi-billion-pound, headline-grabbing deal. However, it is possible that these circles might mix more in future, due to the current circumstances.
Access to the law: back to the basic constitutional law
One of the very first things that law students focus on in their constitutional law courses is the ‘rule of law’. Indeed, the rule of law underpins the work of both ‘divisions’ of lawyers: the barristers and the solicitors.
In 1977, the influential political theorist Joseph Raz identified several principles that may be associated with the ‘rule of law’ in some (but not all) societies. Some of Raz’s principles include the fact that the courts should be accessible, i.e. no man should be denied justice, and that the principles of natural justice should be observed, particularly those concerning the right to a fair hearing.
And what of the actual reality of today, in England and Wales?
“The Government strongly believes that access to justice is a hallmark of a civilised society. The proposals set out in this consultation paper [on the reform of legal aid] represent a radical, wide-ranging and ambitious programme of reform which aims to ensure that legal aid is targeted to those who need it most, for the most serious cases in which legal advice or representation is justified.”
‘A brief history of legal aid’
Legal aid in England and Wales was originally established by the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949, with the aim of providing equality of access and the right to representation before the law. The scope of legal matters covered in 1949 was very tightly drawn.
However, today legal aid in England and Wales costs the taxpayer £2bn a year – a higher per capita spend than anywhere else in the world. It is argued that the current scheme is available for a too wide a range of issues, including some which should not require any legal expertise to resolve. The provision of legal aid is now governed by the Access to Justice Act 1999 and supplementary legislation.
The possible effect of the proposed legal aid reforms
Many civil cases will no longer be eligible for legal aid, and fees paid in civil and family cases will be cut by 10% across the board, according to Ministry of Justice plans set out in the consultation paper, “Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales”, released in November 2010.
The UK government has estimated that, under the plans, £350m will be saved from the Ministry of Justice’s budget by 2014/15, if its proposals are implemented in full.
Ken Clarke QC MP, the Secretary for State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, has said in an interview that,
“I believe that the taxpayer should continue to provide legal aid to those who need it most and for serious issues. But the current system can encourage lengthy, acrimonious and sometimes unnecessary court proceedings, at taxpayers’ expense, which may not always ensure the best result for those involved. The proposals I have outlined suggest clear tough choices to ensure access to public funding in those cases that really require it, the protection of the most vulnerable in society and the efficient performance of the justice system.”
Reaction from the solicitors
The cut in legal aid may offend the rule of law. For example, the Law Society Chief Executive, Desmond Hudson, has warned that:
“If the government persists with these proposals, it would represent a sharp break from the long-standing bipartisan consensus that effective access to justice is essential to underpin the rule of law. Legal aid clients are some of the most vulnerable in society and good legal representation where required is essential if they are to obtain justice. The Society will now consider the green paper in detail.”
The effect on the high street – the community law centres
‘Law Centres’ employ solicitors and case-workers who specialise in debt, discrimination, housing, employment, welfare benefit, community care, mental health law, and immigration and asylum law. Their initiatives are truly inspirational.
In an open letter dated October 2010, Julie Bishop, Director of the Law Centres Federation, provides a very interesting description of the impact that the financial recession – a possible driver in the need to cut costs in legal aid services – has had on the high street legal services:
“We serve 120,000 clients every year. The recession is hitting our clients hard. Already, the Employment Tribunals Service has recorded an increase from 10,800 to 19,000 in the number of cases related to unfair dismissal over the past year [October 2009-10]. ACAS has recorded a 13% increase in enquiries for conciliation services. Law Centres have experienced a 30% increase in clients assisted with employment and discrimination cases.”
An example of where the Law Centres have made a substantial impact is in Brent. Brent Community Law Centre stated that the cuts to legal aid will leave two options for those in poverty on Jobseeker’s Allowance: “a move from poverty to extreme poverty, or possession or eviction if they do not pay their rent.”
They cite that a single person living in a one-bed flat paying £180 per week will have to contribute £18 to the rent out of a weekly income of £65.45, leaving £47.45 for all other expenses including fuel. A separate (but linked issue) which compounds vulnerability is the proposed capping of housing benefit. It is estimated that this will cost claimants in Brent an average of £8,817,844 per year. This loss is to be shared among 1,988 claimants. If their rents are not reduced, they will have to pay £4,436 per household out of their own income. Currently, the Brent Law Centre is able to advise on this issue.
Brent Law Centre argues there will inevitably be far more possession cases in the county court because landlords, whether council or private, will bring court action for rent arrears. In addition, they believe that the impact on costs for other departments, such as social services and child protection need to be assessed.
Brent Law Centre, only through the goodwill of an army of unpaid volunteers, is currently able to provide legal advice and assistance for residents of Brent on a range of legal issues including education, employment, housing, immigration, mental health, public law and welfare benefits.
An unlikely solution?
It has not gone unnoticed that one of the effects of losing £350m from the existing £2.1bn budget may be to put corporate law firms under greater pressure to contribute to the provision of legal aid.
High profile pro-bono interventions by the household names in corporate law can become tied to big international events – such as helping out at the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal (Weil Gotshal & Manges), or representing wounded soldiers in compensation cases against the Ministry of Defence (Hogan Lovells).
Nonetheless, doing pro bono has become attractive to graduates in an increasingly competitive job market, where law firms are keen to attract the best graduates, and graduates are keen to demonstrate their social awareness.
However, it is true that many newly-qualified graduates do contribute much time for free to the local community, often in very deprived areas, but find the work immensely fulfilling. This is despite the fact that their Managing Associates and Partners will not tolerate any compromises in their professional ‘day job’.
Who knows where this is heading?
The ideal outcome might be for a restructuring of legal aid services, such that the public and lawyers have a clear idea where the money is going to, and which enables fair access to legal services for the public. The crunch question inevitably becomes: “where this money is coming from, if it’s not the taxpayer?”
Brent Law Centre is just a single example of where professional lawyers give their skills free-of-charge for the benefit of the community, but it would be tragic to see a situation where lawyers cannot even do this because of the ‘system’.
It might be, even, that the corporate lawyers have a crucial part to play for the benefit of society, in contributing towards the maintenance of legal aid in the high street law.
