You do not have to believe Herbert Smith has joined the magic circle to concede the firm has made major strides in the last five years – just look at the firm’s current standing on Wall Street.
Sure, for years Herbert Smith made great play of its work with Cravath Swaine & Moore and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, but since these are firms the world and its wife have courted for business the sceptics were unconvinced. Yet a tour of Manhattan confirms that the firm’s profile stateside has almost grown to match its own rhetoric. Take the Cravaths link. Going back a decade, initially for clients such as Grand Metropolitan and Pearson, the relationship has bloomed in the last five years, taking in regular work for CSFB, Lazard, BAT and, perhaps most notably, AOL Time Warner.
