Remember Y2K? The Millennium bug, the crash of the Euro, Bush v Gore. It was the year that Clifford Chance became “the world’s first global law firm”, as it elegantly put it, following its tripartite merger with Germany’s Pünder Volhard Weber & Axster and New York-based Rogers & Wells.
In the years that followed, we’d witness a commodities boom that ushered in the era of the millionaire lawyer, firms going truly global, and the dawn of the billion-dollar law firm—Clifford Chance being the first.
