Charlie Geffen’s Brutal Truth: US Firms Won, UK Lost
Source: Non-Billable Charlie Geffen doesn’t mince words. The former Ashurst senior partner and Gibson Dunn private equity co-chair delivered uncomfortable truths about Big Law that most leaders won’t say publicly. “The Global Magic Circle is Entirely American” After four decades watching the City’s transformation, Geffen’s verdict is unequivocal: UK firms lost the global legal market […]
The Innovation Race: How AI and Data Analytics Are Determining the Top Law Firms of the Future
Source: Bloomberg Law The days of the yellow legal pad are numbered, and law firms know it. What began as tentative experiments with artificial intelligence just two years ago has evolved into a full-scale innovation arms race that industry leaders believe will determine which firms dominate the legal landscape of the 2030s. “Today, in the […]
The “Kirklandisation” of Big Law: How One Firm’s Partnership Model Conquered the Legal Industry
Source: Financial Times Decades ago, Kirkland & Ellis pioneered a radical departure from legal tradition: promoting lawyers to “partner” without granting them an ownership stake in the firm. What critics dismissed as “handing out” partnership “like candy” has now become the industry standard, fundamentally reshaping Big Law. The Revolution Spreads As Kirkland rose to become […]
Virtual Law Firms Evolve So Fast They Risk Their Own Destruction
Big Law firms aren’t known as paragons of innovation. Most employ a version of a business model that dates to the early 20th century, known as the Cravath System. But there is a segment of the business evolving on the fly. Here, new law firms pop up from established players all the time. They keep the parts of their old firms that they liked. They change things they didn’t.