The whirlwind tour saw me run out of business cards in less than 3 days but hopefully the large number of meetings will help law firms' optimal participation in the upcoming research! Feedback from lawyers was very helpful with planning of the next edition - EMEA - and there will be a number of changes to provide larger and more detailed practice area coverage than ever before.
Editorial guidelines and deadlines will be out next week here. Thank you again to all of my gracious hosts, not least for the pointer to schug a new hot spice in my culinary arsenal!. So, another year, another book. Onto the next one! Editorial guidelines and research schedule for the upcoming The Legal EMEA edition will be announced here on or shortly after 16 May. The edition will be researched this autumn with similar timescales to previous years. Our new rankings will be launched shortly, so check out our brand new coverage on 13 April , in print and online here.
We welcome queries about the reasons for our ranking decisions when The Legal EMEA edition publishes next week - it's out 13 April, in print and online at www. Requests for post-publication factual updates e. If you are a business development or marketing team member at a law firm or set of chambers, The Legal Newsletter is a useful monthly email that is sent to alert you to upcoming research deadlines, publications or editor visits to markets - it's not a marketing email and recipients are only added upon request; if you don't find the content to be useful, you can be removed at any time.
We thoroughly recommend that you do sign up for the newsletter if you don't already receive it.
Rankings Spotlight
You can request to be added to the mailing list via editorial legal The guide is published on 6 April , in print and online at www. Those exits largely have made sense, since the foreign firms in the market are there - with 1 or 2 honourable exceptions - mainly to source work at a regional level. Under that logic, a firm with an office in Dubai has limited need to be in Abu Dhabi as well. If the UAE has been marked by exits, then Iran - covered again this year by The Legal following the end of sanctions - is a place of note for arrivals.
On 1 February , CMS became the first foreign firm to open in the market since sanctions ended. Most certainly it will not be the last, given the amount of interest that Iran has generated - rightly so, with a young demographic and a population of around 75 million at the last census. Developments in the Iranian legal market - which has some good local practitioners - will be interesting to watch during A number of law firms are out there, burnishing credentials as Iran opens up.
If Iran is a market of interest to you, then do make a note to check our new coverage of Iran when it publishes on 6 April at www. The reiterative announcement by the government of Kazakhstan that it plans to privatise stakes in 65 large companies is a robust step towards a fully open market. I've been banging the drum for the market for a number of years but this news gives real opportunities for new investors and new law firms to look afresh at a market that is growing at pace GDP up 4. World Bank , creating FMCG opportunities alongside the more obvious attractions of oil, gas and mining produce; it's also one of the world's leading grain producers.
The market is geographically well situated at the nexus of East and West and has opened up substantially in recent years, encouraging a number of international law firms to enter the jurisdiction in the past couple of years with several more having been there for many years and with an increasing number of good local law firms operating to international standards. Among the names to be involved in the planned privatisation are some huge entities that are currently partly or wholly held by the sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna and that will be of substantial interest to multinationals.
Among the companies on the list, certainly the most notable is national oil and gas conglomerate KazMunayGaz, but also leading telecoms company Kazakhtelecom, flagship airline Air Astana, state railway company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and Tau-Ken Samruk, a holding company for various mining entities including a stake in Kazzinc. To find out more about law firms currently in Kazakhstan, click here.
THE LEGAL 500 RANKINGS
Editing of The Legal EMEA edition continues at a feverish pace but a brief pause here to announce the numbers just in: That's an excellent effort - and allows us to gather an enormously helpful number of opinions - and we'd like to thank all those many law firms and referees for participating in the guide.
Publication in print and online occurs on 6 April Then we'll start looking at the next one! Quietly amid the splash of its larger mergers, the absorption of OPF Partners into Dentons will give the firm a solid, full-service practice in Luxembourg, as of 1 January It's the latest globally active firm to set up practice in the tax haven it has 3 Magic Circle competitors in situ already and probably more will follow as the market moves towards ever greater fiscal transparency.
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It's also a point of note that I sense a certain cynicism among rival law firms and in the legal media about the Dentons enterprise and its rapid growth, but the fact is the firm has spent the past couple of years cultivating its resources and augmenting to plug gaps: It's on the subject of law firms accessing Africa, particularly North Africa, and the imperatives from the business needs of existing clients. Contains unique researched data and is worth a look if Africa is on your law firm's radar.
Editing of The Legal EMEA edition is well underway but we've also already got one eye on the next edition quite a trick for an editor with one eye! We've had a number of excellent suggestions on this front for new practice areas and new country coverage - thanks to all the firms and readers that have made suggestions. Keep the ideas coming via editorial legal Research for The Legal EMEA is drawing to a close for this year with a handful of markets still ongoing and we've already got one eye on next year. We welcome suggestions for practice areas or countries that you would like to see being introduced or covered in a different way in next year's research.
For law firms proposing new sections, what's most helpful for us in terms of considering the suggestion is that you prepare a Word document detailing:. We promise to review and respond to all suggestions in due course. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions that were implemented for the guide this year. In consideration for the next edition is coverage of Ethiopia and more space for private equity, employment, capital markets and industry-focused sections in more markets.
Research for The Legal EMEA edition is now winding down for the majority of countries but the book doesn't publish for a few months - it publishes 6 April - because we have many facts to check and much editing to do in the interim. Therefore it's worth bearing in mind that we are happy to receive updates on significant lawyer moves days of the year.
If you let us know about a lawyer hire or departure by 29 January , we can take it into account for the new book; still let us know any team moves after that, as we will always update the online version to be correct. No need to let us know about junior lawyers as they won't be mentioned in the guide anyway. Let us know via editorial legal Thanks to all the firms and clients that have participated in the latest research.
Over the past couple of days I've been moonlighting as editor of The Legal Caribbean, which also includes coverage of Bermuda. With the growing number of offshore structures being used as part of global strategy, it's well worth a look. The guide goes into production this week and will launch online here on 9 November. Canada has been increasingly attracting the interest of the international legal community in the past couple of years. We're pleased to announce that the latest edition of The Legal Canada is now available to view online here.
There is a joke I have heard more than once when speaking to Israeli lawyers that aptly sums up the just how crowded a legal market it has become: The number is growing fast with, on average, 3, new attorneys registering each year with the IBA. The sheer number of lawyers in Israel inevitably has created significant fee pressures but the picture of how revenue is spread tells an interesting story: The fee pressures seem to be affecting mostly smaller, consumer-facing firms, rather than those practising at the top end of commercial law. Jonathan Armstrong is deputy editor at The Legal and has been with the company for a number of years.
Jonathan is the assigned researcher for Israel. Our thanks to Zohar Fisher at Robus for helping to source some of the data. The Legal series provides impartial opinion and analysis on thousands of law firms globally. Alongside helping general counsel to make decisions on which law firms might be the ones to instruct, or helping law firms seeking a referral partner, www.
The Legal - EMEA Blogs
The latest edition of The Lex is now live at The Lex With Volkswagen in the most trouble since AC: DC-inspired mass thefts of VW badges in the 80s, it's clear that this will run and run. If only one thing is clear, it's that it's going to generate a lot of work for a lot of law firms. The merger, under the COBALT name, will bring together two high-end, full-service firms with strong resources in all practice areas and across the Baltic States.
To read our current Baltic States coverage, please click here for Estonia, here for Latvia or here for Lithuania. For coverage of Belarus, please click here. The Legal EMEA edition, which publishes in April , will provide updated coverage and an early assessment of the merged entity. With many of the BRIC and MINT countries losing some of their lustre for one reason or another and arguably with the honourable exception of Mexico , where else can we cast around for interest as markets of interest to investors and law firms?
There are many candidates, but both Israel and Kazakhstan spring to mind. Infrastructure projects galore, gargantuan corporations increasingly needing sophisticated legal advice, a country rich in natural resources in soft and hard commodities, and a rapidly developing economy with rising living standards and a relatively young population that is increasingly desiring consumer goods. To read our rankings for Israel, click here. To read about Kazakhstan, click here.
After decades of focusing on lawyers in private practice, The Legal has in the past three years been working hard to ensure that in-house lawyers are equally recognised for their contributions to industry. There are several receptions being hosted for the winners over the next couple of weeks, notably Middle East winners in Dubai on 15 September, winners in Johannesburg on 17 September and then new Russia winners will be unveiled in Moscow on 23 September. The respondents provided approximately 2, hours of interview time to allow us to compile the largest ever legal survey. CIR is instructive stuff that is free to all the survey's participants and can be purchased by law firms.
To find out more, please click here. As Europe, Middle East and Africa research gets underway, it'll be interesting to see the evidence underpinning a number of issues and trends that have unfolded or are unfolding. Will a global law firm take that plunge into Israel?
Will Q4 of genuinely provide the spate of IPOs that have been predicted in numerous markets? And just to watch South Africa's legal market shake out, in the wake of recent arrivals, reorganisations e. Also, which international firm will be next back into Egypt? And whether Russia's recently introduced requirement for fingerprints with travel visas has impacted the flow of business people back and forth!
This is just a brief reminder that EMEA referees are due and written submission deadline is 10 August. Please send them to editorial legal Spreadsheets can be obtained from the research info page at www. The deadline for these is 10 August. Our researchers will travel in September or October this year dependent on the country. We will be visiting the following countries: Contact details of researchers will be available on the website on 21 August at www. Research begins on or after 24 August dependent on the country , when researchers will begin the process of reviewing submissions and contacting law firms to arrange interviews.
Israel research and timing of visit will, of course, take account of Jewish holiday period. The team will be happy to meet if you pop by The Legal stand or want to arrange meetings around the event. Mentioned these last year but well worth an encore: If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact us via editorial legal When questions do arise, it's first worth checking our Frequently Asked Questions PDF, which can be found on the "How your law firm can get involved" page, or simply click here.
Editorial submission guidelines invite "up to 10 key work highlights". We often get asked if law firms can supply more than that. Researchers receive many submissions and conciseness makes for a strong argument. If you wish to supply more examples of work, then do so by a providing a list of active clients for potential further discussion and b provide an appendix list of shorter examples in bullet-point format; these can be used if desired or discussed in interview , without the danger of cluttering the main message.
When I meet law firms, many don't know about The Legal Historical Data service, which is actually a pretty useful little tool that kind of gets lost amidst the sea of data. Users are able to manipulate the raw data to produce and download reports that can, for example, benchmark law firms with peers and competitors; customise rankings data for use in pitch documents and RFPs; and identify strong candidates for potential new office openings or lateral hires. As editor, I use this data to identify trends and progress in practices across certain markets or practice areas.
If you're interested in learning more, please visit www. The new "Industry focus" sections in the upcoming edition of The Legal EMEA have attracted considerable interest, so here is a quick rationale to explain their introduction: Each "Industry focus" section is looking at the ability of a law firm to provide full-service representation of clients in the specified industry sector and we're looking for firms that can show consistent experience in acting for that type of client.
Latest Updates
It might include industry-specific regulatory work e. Some of the sections are a re-branding of existing coverage e. Telecoms is now Industry focus: Telecoms , while others are new additions e. Retailers ; ultimately, each Industry focus section provides legal Our referee feedback - regardless of country - routinely shows that clients want lawyers that know their industry and this is a way to help them find it.
Please do read the guidelines carefully because we do review and change practice area coverage to respond to demand. There are several extra countries being researched this year: Please email editorial legal Some interesting stats from the Law Society on numbers of practising solicitors in Ireland; interesting but understandable as work returns to law firms — only two of the 20 largest firms did not increase numbers to address that influx.
The stats show that the five largest firms all recruited substantially in — extra solicitors at the top five firms is a significant increase when even the largest firms number in the lawyers range. The stats also show the continued growth of recent arrivals: Maples and Calder and Walkers Ireland. At the end of the week, we will announce the schedule and guidelines for The Legal Europe, Middle East and Africa research for the edition.
Guidelines will be found here - www. When looking at the guidelines, please do check to see if we are covering new countries or practice areas. The lists are revised annually because they do change, in order to respond to demand for coverage. Don't get caught out by not submitting for a new section! I was in Belgium last week to make a presentation to Legal Marketing Brussels regarding The Legal research process, as well as to meet with a number of law firms.
Hot on the list of topics was not only how the new EU competition commissioner is performing, but also how to pronounce her surname! We are very pleased to announce some team developments at The Legal Lauren Hughes and Alex Boyes have moved on to pastures new and we thank them for their contribution to The Legal and wish them well in their future careers.
New law firms are ranked, new practice areas covered and more countries added. We have introduced three new Regional Summary chapters to assess law firms with broad experience across regional theatres and have covered several additional countries in the rankings this year, namely Albania, Angola, Armenia, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Monaco, Montenegro, Mozambique, and Tanzania.
The edition will be published in print and online at www. Thank you again to the thousands of law firms which contributed and the many tens of thousands of lawyers, business development people, lawyers and clients who took part in what is the 25th annual edition of the EMEA guide. We contacted just short of , clients for EMEA this year and added eight new countries to our coverage, as well as three new "Regional Summary" chapters.
I can say with great certainty that this is our heaviest book ever! The most efficient means of contacting us regarding queries or to request factual updates is to send an email to editorial legal Please address questions to editorial legal Following this process will allow us to log, investigate and address the query in the most timely and efficient manner. We welcome queries about the rankings. If you have a question about the new rankings, please do ask us because we will always be prepared to provide feedback on the reason for a particular ranking or, indeed, to make a post-publication factual updates when lawyers move on or law firm names change.
The first two months of have seen considerable interest and investment in Africa by international law firms and we can expect that trend to continue throughout Since then, it has been continually growing and, as of today, employs 31 lawyers representing a wide range of nationalities with a reasonable expectation to achieve the size of around 50 lawyers within the next two years. For more information on how to make the most of your firm's presence in The Legal 's rankings, please contact: The English Bar Asia Pacific: Meet the team How can my law firm get involved?
Firms in the spotlight. Firm profile subscriptions For more information on how to make the most of your firm's presence in The Legal 's rankings, please contact: The Legal on twitter. How can your firm be involved With The Legal ? The Legal Services for lawyers. The Legal in print United States. International Law Firm Networks Click here to research the best law firm networks.
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