Out of the 23 ranking spots in these top two tiers, 13 are occupied by magic circle firms (eight are taken by US firms and just two by other native City firms). Here are the top two tiers of the London rankings in banking and corporate. Let's look at the Chambers UK 2019 rankings to see what we mean. Lawyers advise the world's largest and best-known corporations on huge transformative business transactions. Each has a massive army of lawyers at its disposal which can be swung into action when the corporate giants beckon. But they are best at a certain type of legal work, namely banking, finance and corporate – the stuff the City feeds on. So why do legal commentators (ourselves included) single out this group of five? Keep reading to find out.Ĭalling the magic circle firms ‘the best’ would be too simple and often untrue. These five firms are far from being the largest in the UK or the world, and plenty of other London firms are big, corporate and very international ( Hogan Lovells and Norton Rose Fulbright spring to mind). Teams like employment, tax and IP often play a supportive, advisory role in facilitating these transactions and a big bulk of litigation work is financial in nature too. The work is heavily focused on corporate and finance: these departments stand at the heart of the firm overseeing multibillion-pound transactions. All of them have a trainee intake of close to 100 a year, and have a reputation for working graduates hard and demanding a lot of them. What sets these firms apart from the rest of the UK legal market? Well, they are all big, based in London, and have sizeable international operations. The term 'magic circle' was first coined by legal journalists in the late 1990s, and for the past 15 years it has consisted of a distinct group of five: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters, and Slaughter and May. The name, make-up and size of London's most elite group of firms has gone through several iterations since the 1990s (at one point it was called the ' club of nine' and included Stephenson Harwood, Lovells, Herbert Smith and Norton Rose). The Economist labelled the magic circle a group of ' posh London law firms', but we reckon you need a more helpful definition than that. Not to be confused with the magicians' union of the same name, this is a moniker for an elite group of five London law firms which share a focus on corporate and finance work. You’ve probably heard of the phrase 'the magic circle'.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |