Financial Times article cites Edwards Gibson research in: “Slaughter and May stands firm in face of US invasion”
We are really pleased that research from Edwards Gibson’s publication of record has once again been featured in the Financial Times, in this week's excellent article by Suzi Ring “Slaughter and May stands firm in face of US invasion”.
The article explores how, in the age of the $20 million US law firm partner hire in London, the UK’s most profitable law firm – and English Big Law’s only remaining “true partnership” (non-LLP) – has so far been able to stave off predations from far more profitable US law firms thanks to its genuinely unique culture. As we say in the article “the combination of cutting-edge work, [relatively] high profitability and an almost mystically cohesive, homegrown partnership has made Slaughter and May’s partners almost impervious to head-hunters.” Indeed, Edwards Gibson estimates that the firm has probably only ever lost three laterals to other firms that it would have preferred to have kept.
Slaughter and May benefits from a reputation premium in English law which has traditionally meant that, despite the seemingly studied insouciance of its partners towards winning work, the firm often had first dibs on the most complex and profitable matters around. Nevertheless, as the article points out, there are challenges to the tried and tested model which has continued to see the magic circle firm prioritise its traditional FTSE 100 blue-chip customers over what have become far more lucrative US private equity clients which, at the top end, have increasingly relied on US law firms to advise them.Although Slaughters has recently taken steps to upgrade is private equity offering, the very real risk is that if that more than decade long dynamo of Big Law – private equity – keeps firing, then Slaughter and May’s relative weakness in that space will inevitably diminish its relative profitability and market standing. If that happens, regardless of internal cohesion, history tells us its partners will become somewhat less impervious to headhunt calls!
Read the online version of the Financial Times (paywall) article here.