Until recently, if you asked a managing partner about the ‘Clementi reforms’, you would be met with a blank expression. Now, finally, the metaphorical cash tills are starting to ring as partners wake up to the possibility that they may soon have the opportunity to sell their firms.
A managing partner reports that he turned up at a recent seminar on the Draft Legal Services Bill to be confronted with a dozen or so colleagues from other firms who had been sent on a similar fact-finding mission. Much of the Bill is taken up with regulatory reform. It is the bit about ‘alternative business structures’ that is causing all the belated interest. Legal Week has been exploring the possibilities thrown up by a legal ‘big bang’ pretty much since the magazine’s launch in 1999, when leading South African law firm Edward Nathan Friedland was bought by Nedcor Investment Bank. Closer to home, in 2001, business services consolidator Tenon Group caused a flurry of excitement by buying West End music specialist Statham Gill Davies for £7m, prompting the follow-up Legal Week analysis ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ (see story).
