Latest legal news

An English-Scottish law firm merger is understood to have been negotiated between the leadership teams of London-based Addleshaw Goddard and Maclay Murray & Spens, which has offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. | 10yrs

The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to accept recommendations for a drone registration system. Brendan Schulman, lawyer at DJI, the world's biggest manufacturer of drones, has estimated that 1 million drones could be affected. | 10yrs

Plexus Law, the defendant insurance arm of the Alternative Business Structure group Parabis, has been transferred back with its 900 staff to founder Andrew McDougall and colleagues. | 10yrs

Linklaters has distanced itself from a charity which assists Syrian refugees - and which claimed that the law firm was a sponsor. | 10yrs

Burleson, the Houston-based energy law firm, is to shut all five of its offices by the end of December in response to the downturn in the sector. | 10yrs

LexisNexis has announced that it has taken over Lex Machina, giving the acquired business access to 'a vast collection of litigation documents' that will be used to 'bring legal analytics to all of the law'. | 10yrs

District attorneys, police chiefs and prosecutors across America launched a reinvigorated campaign push for federal legislation that would provide investigators access to hitherto private, encrypted communications. | 10yrs

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has sealed a deal to purchase Botox-maker Allergan for $160 billion, marking the biggest pharmaceutical takeover in history and creating what will be the world's largest drug maker by sales. | 10yrs

An annual survey conducted by the Association of Corporate Counsel in Washington suggests that in-house legal departments may struggle to fill vacant positions, with many candidates failing to fit the bill and low desire for lateral in-house moves. | 10yrs

In research carried out and analysed at Indiana University, lawyers exceeding 60 hours weekly show higher satisfaction levels than others in 10 out of 14 areas. | 10yrs

Herbert Smith Freehills will again have a presence in Riyadh when, next year, it sets up an exclusive association with Nasser Al-Hamdan. | 10yrs

A weekly round-up of moves from around the globe. | 10yrs

The privacy complaints of more than 25,000 Facebook uses are to be reviewed by the Austrian Supreme Court, where it will be decided whether the individuals can make their cases against Facebook as a group class action. | 10yrs

The Treasury has rebuffed critics of the decision to use lawyers from magic circle firms to provide legal counsel over the transfer of the Government's stake in the Eurostar franchise. | 10yrs

Pierre Boivin, M&A and natural resources specialist at the Canadian law firm, has been released after being taken hostage by Islamic extremists in an attack on the Radisson hotel in Mali's capital city of Bamako. | 10yrs

A report from the cross-party group of MPs of the House of Commons Justice Committee has revealed 'grave misgivings' about the criminal courts charge and called for legislation to abolish it. | 10yrs

The London-based Court of Appeal has requested the Court of the Justice of the EU (CJEU) clarify whether EU countries are bound by a previous judgement when constructing national laws on customer data retention. | 10yrs

Thomson Snell & Passmore, based in the UK towns of Dartford and Tunbridge Wells, has been named as the oldest law firm still in operation by the Guinness Book of Records. | 10yrs

A third of the Irish legal top 20 have experienced such an attack in the last year - as evidence emerges that suggests they are more likely to be on the receiving end of these attempts than Irish law firms overall. | 10yrs