Roxanne Selby

Introducing Mishcon de Reya's latest guide, providing a concise overview of the key competition law principles under UK law relevant to start-ups and growing companies. Download your copy for practical guidance to help new businesses operate legally and ethically while fostering innovation and growth, from Gwen Ballin-Reeler and Chanelle Cattin: https://lnkd.in/gZQay-35

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How successful is Lawfront? Reading through The Legal 500 UK 2026 rankings, I found myself asking: what impact have we had on the market for regional legal services in England? The answer surprised me. The Data Across our six member firms—Brachers, Farleys, Fisher Jones Greenwood, Nelsons, Slater Heelis, and Trethowans—we've secured 81 Legal 500 rankings in regional England (excluding London). Based on my reading, that's greater breadth than any legal services business in England for regional law! For context: - 14 Tier 1 rankings - 29 Tier 2 rankings - 53% of all rankings in the top two tiers Coverage spans South East (35 rankings), North West (20), East Midlands (19), and South West (14) What Legal 500 Rankings Don't Tell You Here's what matters as much as the numbers: these rankings reflect six firms that still operate as Brachers, Farleys, Fisher Jones Greenwood, Nelsons, Slater Heelis, and Trethowans. Local partnerships intact. Regional identities preserved. Client relationships maintained. What changed: shared technology infrastructure (Project Drive, Katchr, ShareDo), operational standards, knowledge management, and the ability to recruit at platform scale rather than as individual 150-200 lawyer regional firms. Rankings measure recognition. They don't measure client satisfaction, profitability, lawyer retention, or operational efficiency. They're one signal among many. A Challenge to the Market I'm genuinely curious: has anyone achieved higher combined Legal 500 recognition in regional England outside London? If you're operating a similar model and you've scored higher, I'd like to know about it. What Constitutes Success? This is the real question. Is success measured by: - Total rankings breadth? - Tier 1 concentration? - Revenue growth? - Lawyer satisfaction scores? - Client retention rates? - Something else entirely? I'd argue it's all of these. For Lawfront, success means proving that regional firms can perform at national level without sacrificing local identity or client relationships. The Legal 500 results suggest we're moving in the right direction. Your Perspective? If you're operating in regional legal services—as a firm leader, managing partner, or platform operator—what metrics matter most to you? And if you've achieved stronger Legal 500 performance than our 81 combined rankings in regional England, I'm genuinely interested in hearing about it. The market needs more transparency on what works, not just who ranks where. https://lnkd.in/emzNXEp9

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The UK Supreme Court judgment on the payment of commissions by finance lenders to motor dealers https://lnkd.in/exCGz7Ww is a great read:   1) important remarks on the interlinkages between common law/equity and private law/sector regulation. (1A From a comparative law perspective the judgment supports Pierre Legrand’s claims about the difficulty of convergence between common and civil law. https://lnkd.in/eeTwui_Q) 2) Somewhat surprising to me that policy considerations played a relatively limited role in the decision. 3) Could the claimants have been more successful by making a competition law claim? See Allianz Hungaria https://lnkd.in/eR4WmqHu   which suggested that agreements between insurance companies and car dealers/repairers by which the remuneration paid by the former to the latter depends on the number of insurance contracts that the dealer has sold as intermediary for that insurance company may be deemed restrictions of competition by object. A competition law framing might have allowed a deeper exploration of the commercial rationality (if any) of the deals between finance companies and dealers: might these payments have been efficient? 4) From a private enforcement lens, worth noting that the industry regulator is moving towards a compensation scheme.  https://lnkd.in/eDMVJz8u Lessons for competition damages claims perhaps? Sometimes follow-on damages claims could be processed more efficiently through such schemes - any Member State want to take the lead? 🙂      

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LexisNexis report: Over 60% of UK lawyers now ‘use GenAI’, but law firm culture slows progress Sixty-one percent of lawyers say they are now using generative AI in their work, according to a new report out today (2 September) from LexisNexis, but two-thirds say slow organisational cultures risk undermining progress. Despite headline adoption clearly escalating, it is important to note that 11% of lawyers said they are using GenAI heavily for day-to-day work and that number drops to 7% at large and medium-sized firms. There are some interesting and wide-ranging findings in here, take a look. I haven't reported on how lawyers would use the time they save from using GenAI (more work or work/life balance) because I'm not clear on whether a significant amount of time is yet being freed up. #legaltech #legalservices #generativeai https://lnkd.in/e4dR3N7C

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There's a huge discrepancy in General Counsel salaries, which often frustrates people. But in reality, there's a reason for this, and I think it's because there are three levels to being a GC. Level one is to provide top quality legal advice. You tell the business what they need to know, providing legal insights. That's good stuff, and necessary for a business, but in reality a significant amount of your time is managing external counsel. Level two adds in strategic input - what's good for the business' goals, offering actionable risk insights, and bridging that gap between legal and the commercial side of the business. But level three is something else entirely, they do two key things: 1) they sense problems early and prevent them from happening. It's not about saying 'we've looked at the facts and here's our solution to this'. It's about saying 'don't worry, we already knew this might happen, we prepared our legal and business tactics to mitigate this 2 years ago, and we've already fixed it'. 2) they're psychologists. They translate complex challenges into clear, manageable information, but the key is that their communication is outstanding. They know how to manage the CEO's ego, how to work with sales to keep their energy high during a collapsing transaction, how to understand the CFO's financial motivations whilst still explaining that something isn't long-term the right move. They guide leadership and colleagues without threatening their autonomy and freedom to make commercial decisions. The CEO still feels in control, the business stays focused on profits, and legal risk is handled long before it becomes a commercial distraction. Want to keep your budgets low? That's ok, you'll get good lawyers and good strategists. But when you pay top-dollar, you get someone who can take bad news and make it a highlight of your day, meaning you continue to be able to focus on the things that matter to you.

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Delighted to see that Edwards Gibson's research on female partner hires in law firms was featured in the weekend Financial Times, and it was a pleasure to share my thoughts with Suzi Ring for this important piece. The article highlights that, despite genuine efforts by commercial firms to address the gender imbalance — which, to be fair, is evident in the raw data at the junior partner level — women still account for only a fifth of hires in the most lucrative practice areas: corporate and finance. Drawing on various sources, the article explores the reasons behind this disparity, focusing on the challenges of balancing primary carer responsibilities with the long and unpredictable hours required for deal-focused roles. It also touches on another factor that we, as headhunters, know well: the methodology law firms use to assess a partner’s value, while ostensibly objective, tends to favour men over women. This is because — contrary to what some firms claim — external partner hires are rarely about “filling skill-set gaps” and almost always about “buying books of business.” A partner’s value is therefore largely determined by their personal business case. And the reality is that women, who are often more risk-averse (or less inclined toward hyperbole!), tend to understate the size of their portable practice compared to men. As I mention in the article: “Men tend to be far more optimistic about the size of their client followings — this is both an emollient for the hire itself, and it often results in them achieving higher compensation … as a general rule, we multiply a man’s business case by 0.8 and a woman’s by 1.2.” For the full Financial Times article: “Corporate law firms hire mostly men for highest-paid roles” click here: https://on.ft.com/4mDtiTb #biglaw #womeninlaw #recruitment #lawfirm #partnership #london #lawyers #privateequity #genderpaygap 

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The top 5 Legal Spend Management mistakes I see time and again. Your external legal spend is spiralling out of control and yet it doesn't have to be that way. I see the same mistakes over and over. Legal teams burning through budgets, frustrated with law firm performance, yet making the same fundamental errors year after year. Here are the five mistakes that are costing you more than you realise: 1. You're flying blind on data. Most GCs can't tell me what they spent last year, let alone which firms delivered the best value. You're making sourcing decisions based on gut feel rather than evidence. That's not strategy - that's gambling with the company's money. 2. You have no billing guidelines, so there are no rules of engagement. Your law firms are making up the rules as they go along - who attends meetings, what gets billed, how expenses are handled. Without clear guidelines, you're giving them a blank cheque and wondering why the bill keeps growing. 3. You're not leveraging your relationships to deliver meaningful added-value services. You're spending a lot with these firms, yet all you get in return is legal advice. Where are the market insights? The training for your team? The thought leadership? You're paying premium rates for commodity service. 4. You never actually review performance. When did you last sit down with your panel firms and have an honest conversation about what's working and what isn't? Most legal teams review their law firms about as often as they review their office furniture. 5. You're conflict-averse when it comes to challenging poor performance. That firm that consistently over-runs budgets and misses deadlines? You keep instructing them because change feels harder than accepting mediocrity. The result? Spiralling costs, frustrated stakeholders, and law firm partners who think you're a soft touch. The legal teams that get external spend right understand something fundamental - law firms are suppliers, not sacred cows. Manage them like it. Which of these mistakes is costing your team the most?

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