Welcome to the January edition of Byfield Bytes, your monthly update on the biggest stories and issues impacting the business of law – and the first of 2024!
There has been no shortage of headline-grabbing stories to kick off the year. The Post Office inquiry continues to throw up outrage and shock in equal measure and promises a long tail of consequences for the legal sector.
The Government has already discussed plans to introduce legislation to overturn the precedent of the PACCAR judgment, which curtailed litigation funding of class action claims in the Competition Appeal Tribunal by limiting the extent to which funders can claim a portion of damages in the cases they support. Disputes lawyers, both of a claimant and defendant hue, have welcomed it – despite the slightly more uncomfortable questions about the relationship between Government and the Courts. Shout out to John Hyde at the Law Society Gazette, who has really stood foremost in the pack here.
This month, Linklaters continued to make strides in the US, with the hiring of George Casey, the global co-managing partner of Shearman & Sterling, along with a six-member M&A team in New York. All eyes are on how the rest of the artist-formerly-known-as-the-Magic-Circle responds ahead of the blockbuster integration of Shearman and Allen & Overy, due to go live in May.
Office attendance is back on the menu, with Slaughter and May introducing plans to monitor building entries and share attendance data with group heads and HR. The firm claims that it needs to address concerns related to a small number of employees failing to meet in-office requirements, which could include ‘naming and shaming’ those primarily working from home. Expect more questions to be asked about which firms will tighten their rules – and whether associates will choose to vote with their feet.
Lastly, the Axiom Ince drama continues to rumble on. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is expanding its workforce to handle the surge in claims, with an additional seven additional staff at a cost of £310,000. The super-regulator, the Legal Services Board (LSB), is about to put the SRA’s handling of the affair under the microscope – who knows what it will uncover?
Big Questions for February
- Do we expect to see more partner moves from the UK elite to US firms in London – and the other way in New York?
- Will we finally start to see the much-prophesised uplift in public and private transactions?
- Will there be any surprises in the US firm financial results, or more-of-the-same with continued growth?
- As we enter into LGBTQ+ History Month, what are firms doing to really make themselves inclusive?
Post of the Month
Despite my hesitation, the Byfield team insisted that my LinkedIn post should be included in the newsletter…
Lawyer Quote of the Month
Dr Sam De Silva, partner at international firm CMS and chair of the BCS’ Law Specialist Group, said that the Post Office scandal shows the dangers of courts unquestioningly accepting the output of IT systems as reliable evidence.
‘There remains a legal presumption that the computer is always right,’ De Silva said. ‘The Post Office could rely on the common law position that the courts were entitled to assume that the IT system was operating correctly.’ This put the burden on accused sub-postmasters to prove that the outputs and logs from the Horizon computer system were not accurate,’ he said. ‘Yet how could non-IT specialists be expected to prove this when even some experienced IT professionals would find it a challenge to do so?’
If the Post Office had been required to prove that Horizon was operating reliably, most of the individual cases against postmasters might have had a different outcome, he said. In future: ‘Organisations relying on evidence generated from computer systems to support prosecutions should be required to prove that the underlying computer system is reliable; we hope this will be a clear recommendation from the current [public] inquiry.’
Byfield Spotlight
- Last week, Meg was joined by HSBC’s Head of Professional & Business Services, Victoria Ritchie, for an episode of Counsel Culture. They discussed various aspects of HSBC’s annual law firm strategy report for 2024 including, how law firms are planning for the impact of the basis period reform on their finances, how they’re investing in ESG, overseas expansion and technology and how banks are helping them facilitate those investments. They also explored the relationship between in-house lawyers and external advisers when considering the ESG requirements to work with certain law firms or banks.
- In our second blog of 2024, we spoke to Bethaney Durkin, Ben Girdlestone, Gus Sellitto and Michael Evans to hear their thoughts on what 2024 might hold for the legal industry.
- Senior Account Executive Tom Ziprin explores whether litigation and lawsuits are the best response when dealing with trademark and copyright disputes in the first Byfield blog of the year.
Here’s a few things you might have missed…
- Our first Counsel Culture episode of the year featured a conversation between Meg and Account Director Liam McCafferty. They discussed the Post Office scandal, Linklaters’ latest hire in the US, SRA fines for breaches of transparency, M&A advisers table from the London Stock Exchange Group and the latest update on Axiom Ince and the compensation cap.
- I also featured in an episode of Counsel Culture this month where Meg and myself covered a few interesting stories including the new black box partner remuneration model at Paul Weiss, Slaughter and May announcing it will name and shame those who work from home full time, SSB Law going bust and owing £200m to litigation funders and the government reversing the July PACCAR decision for the Post Office Inquiry.
