Latest legal news

UK-based law firm Pinsent Masons is to launch in Australia and has recruited a local team to lead the project. | 11yrs

The 600-lawyer firm Troutman Sanders which opened an office in Charlotte last May with four K&L Gates corporate and real estate lawyers is now taking on another four from K&L, this time specialising in M&A. | 11yrs

The firms are blocking free speech by over-reacting to the slightest criticism, according to a UK regulator. | 11yrs

A team of six Freshfields litigators, led by counsel Maxim Kulkov, has quit the practice in order to set up a dispute resolution practice called Kulkov Kolotilov & Partners. | 11yrs

The race to be the world's largest law firm by turnover is over as DLA Piper published flat income for 2014 - on US$2.48b - while Latham & Watkins pushed its earnings up 14 per cent to take it to $2.61b. | 11yrs

The first detailed survey of lateral partner moves in the UK tax and private client area shows a growth of interest in developing private wealth and tax litigation teams - partly reflecting increasing complexity of the law in this sector. | 11yrs

The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) has set up a new membership category - for legal operations personnel - following widespread growth of this function among US legal departments. | 11yrs

Over ten lawyers in the Tampa office of GrayRobinson have stopped using desks in the traditional way and are using lap desks and standing desks with the old desk - in one case - relegated to the role of storage container. | 11yrs

Law firms which win more complex briefs from their clients get closer to the boardroom and to directors who have larger expenditure budgets. | 11yrs

Reflecting a trend which is developing across the leading firms, Reed Smith has rapidly increased its 'client value' team - the unit which helps price transactions and liaises with clients in order to avoid nasty billing surprises. | 11yrs

The regulatory body for England and Wales has reported an increase in the number of criminals masquerading as lawyers. | 11yrs

Luxury property is top of the spend list for the rich, followed by art, according to a survey for the Luxury Law Summit 2015. | 11yrs

Brian O'Donnell and his wife Mary were once worth €1b and were one of the richest property-speculating couples in Ireland and the UK - but they have been resisting repossession of the family home in Dublin Bay by locking out the receivers. | 11yrs

Lawyers are likely to be paying more attention to tax issues this year - either in advising an estimated 1,200 wealthy Indians with secret HSBC bank accounts in Switzerland or in answering suspicions that they themselves are under-declaring. | 11yrs

Joe Beltrami, who acted in over 350 murder cases, appeared in every court in Scotland from the Duns to Shetland and role model for a generation of lawyers, has died, aged 82. | 11yrs

Arthur Cox, A & L Goodbody and other leading Irish practices which have worked with the tobacco industry are coming under the spotlight after the Children's Minister appeared to urge a government-wide ban on links with advisers to the sector. | 11yrs

General counsel are being urged by Latham & Watkins to build up their in-team technology understanding in order to have the 'comfort and competence in technology issues so that they can advise at the highest level on hard questions' on cyber attacks. | 11yrs

Markus Buchart, 52, is seeking unspecified special, aggravated and punitive damages and costs from the city of Winnipeg after he was sacked from the legal department a few days before Christmas. | 11yrs

The Bank of England, the UK's top bank regulator, has been accused of not putting its officials under scrutiny 'in the way in which professional people are normally assessed' when it investigated a Forex scandal for which £4b of fines have been paid. | 11yrs