The British Empire may be long gone, but its legacy of common law legal systems in countries including Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Africa is proving to be a real boon for London’s leading law firms, for whom history has provided a large pool of well-qualified, experienced legal talent willing and able to relocate and hit the ground running in times of high demand.
This certainly is one of those times. The recovery of the London M&A market has coincided with a demographic depression in the available numbers of UK-qualified lawyers, thanks – in part – to the downturn in newly-qualified retention rates at the turn of the decade following the end of the dotcom boom.
