The Lawyer Podcast
The Lawyer
96 episodes
Hosted by editor Catrin Griffiths and litigation editor Christian Smith, every second Thursday The Lawyer Podcast brings you our take on the top stories, trends and views moving the legal market. For more news, analysis and data, go to www.thelawyer.com. The Lawyer Podcast can be contacted at podcast@thelawyer.com.
Episodes page 1 of 2
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Freshfields’ leaked AI plans: Genius? Greed? Or both?
Send us Fan Mail Freshfields created a storm last week when leaked emails revealed it was considering spinning off its AI venture potentially “worth billions”. According to the Financial Times, managing partner Alan…
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Manchester City: The lawyers' feeding frenzy has only just begun
Send us Fan Mail The Manchester City judgment is an enormous moment for both law and football. 114/115 charges were proven against the club in a case with ramifications far beyond sport. So on the new episode of The…
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Where will Weil’s wobbles end?
Send us Fan Mail Losing big teams of senior lawyers has been something of a trend in 2026. New York firm Weil Gotshal & Manges is the latest to suffer a series of top tier exits. Mike Aiello, a member of the firm’s…
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Why Wachtell, football and private equity dominated the summer
Send us Fan Mail The Lawyer Podcast is back from the summer break on its new Monday publication date. 2026 was a summer to remember, and not just because of Britain's heatwaves. Legal news was far from dry in July…
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It’s not just Cravath under threat in New York
Send us Fan Mail New York’s legal market is changing. For those long established firms, pressure is coming from multiple directions. The city is now home to more than just the traditional New York headquartered firms…
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Is AI about to get too expensive for lawyers?
Send us Fan Mail Just as the world of law was getting carried away with the excitement of AI, legal tech firm Legora has brought us all thudding back down to earth. Legora has told its clients that it plans to move…
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AI and lawyer job cuts: the annoying truth
Send us Fan Mail It is an uncertain time for those wanting a career in the law. Doom-mongers would have you think that AI is about to lead to a mass cull in junior lawyer roles around the world. But at the same…
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It's raining men at A&O Shearman (and BigLaw)
Send us Fan Mail In 2015, The Lawyer wrote: “eight candidates for two top roles at Allen & Overy, and not one woman. For a law firm committed to that 30 per cent target, it’s not a good look.” Fast-forward to 2026…
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Legal AI: Have Harvey and Legora peaked?
Send us Fan Mail We’ve all been seeing a lot more of Jude Law lately. Legal AI firm Legora’s effort to cement itself in our consciousness with expensive ads featuring the actor has certainly been refreshing In its…
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Fess up about Germany, Freshfields
Send us Fan Mail Ever since its big German mergers in 2000, the firm has been one of the major international players in Europe and is now the second largest law firm in Germany. And yet… Freshfields has lost some top…
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REPLAY: Taylor Wessing and Winston & Strawn's transatlantic tie-up
Send us Fan Mail The Lawyer Podcast is on holiday this week, but with Taylor Wessing and Winston and Strawn aiming to complete their merger in three weeks’ time, we thought you might like to listen back to our episode…
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Kirkland's partners make $11m a year – but can it last?
Send us Fan Mail In hindsight, Kirkland & Ellis’s rise to the top of BigLaw may now seem as predictable as death and taxes. There was even a sense of inevitability when its latest financial results were released…
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Scottish lawyers are raging about private equity
Send us Fan Mail Private equity investment in law firms is kicking off in England. But in Scotland, lawyers are at risk of falling behind as regulations restrict Scottish firms from doing the same – and that’s left…
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Slaughter and May is a Silver Circle firm
Send us Fan Mail The Silver Circle was a concept coined by The Lawyer more than 20 years ago. Rather than describing a set of “magic circle wannabes”, its purpose was to collate the firms’ strategies and models. Those…
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Brad Karp, the Epstein files, and the future of Paul Weiss
Send us Fan Mail Brad Karp became a household name - for Big Law at least - during his 17 year tenure at the helm of Paul Weiss. But the long serving chair of the New York firm resigned from his leadership role last…
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Why Greenland could redraw the law firm map
Send us Fan Mail The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos usually revolves around talk of business, finance and investment. Indeed, law firms Baker McKenzie and DLA Piper are official partners of the…
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Hogan Lovells Cadwalader: mega deal or damp squib?
Send us Fan Mail The Lawyer Podcast is back for 2026 and it is picking up where we left off: with transatlantic mergers. Just before Christmas, Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader announced what will be, by value, the…
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BONUS episode: Taylor Wessing’s big US gamble
Send us Fan Mail As if 2025 needed just another little dollop of big legal news, Taylor Wessing and Winston & Strawn are set to become the fourth major transatlantic merger in two and a half years. So The Lawyer…
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Why 2025 marked a turning point for the business of law
Send us Fan Mail As 2025 draws to a close, it feels like 2025 has been an inflection point for the legal sector. While firm financials largely look good, fundamental changes are underway on both sides of the…
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The unfiltered take on the Ashurst Perkins Coie merger
Send us Fan Mail Unlike A&O’s tie up with Shearman and Sterling, Ashurst’s announcement that it had agreed a merger did not come as a surprise. The firm had been in the market for a US-merger for more than two…
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Merger mania hits New York
Send us Fan Mail The Lawyer’s editor Catrin Griffiths and director of insight Matt Byrne are back from a fact-finding mission in New York, and merger mania is gripping the city’s lawyers. As firms seek scale, reach…
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Let's tax all the lawyers!
Send us Fan Mail Tax rises for partnerships may be on the way in next month’s Budget – and potentially big ones at that. Many lawyers were left shocked after the news broke last week that the Government is…
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Private equity: a poisoned chalice?
Send us Fan Mail Private equity investment in law firms has accelerated in the past 12 months. Essentially every UK200 law firm in the country has been approached, and many have already accepted the opportunity. Now…
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UK 200 special: The most interesting firms in the top 100
Send us Fan Mail The Lawyer's UK200: Top 100 report, sponsored by Legora, is out and it contains 100 stories of firms forging ahead or falling behind. But which are the most interesting of all? In this week's episode…
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Calling all gardeners - your firm needs you!
Send us Fan Mail Gardening has transformed from an old-fashioned past-time to a popular trend in the past few years, and now, even law firms are getting in on the action. Firms like Eversheds, Switalskis and CANDEY…
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Why it was a hot debunching summer - and what else you missed on your holidays
Send us Fan Mail The kids are back in school, the clouds are rolling in, and offices across the land are filling up with lawyers returning from their holidays. And just in time, The Lawyer Podcast is back after the…
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Are the New York elite finished?
Send us Fan Mail There is a radical reconfiguration taking place in the world of BigLaw that may make terms like magic circle or white shoe firm obsolete. The transatlantic, private capital corridor between New York…
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The runny poop problem is law's next battleground
Send us Fan Mail As the government launches a sweeping review into parental leave, The Lawyer Podcast takes a look at the challenges faced by parents and other carers working in the legal sector. Are firms pulling…
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Freshfields, Lewis Silkin and the C-word
Send us Fan Mail Lewis Silkin and Freshfields are two very different law firms. But they now have one thing in common – they won one of the two big awards at The Lawyer Awards 2025 last week. Now, The Lawyer Podcast…
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Paul Weiss’s growth is just the tip of the iceberg
Send us Fan Mail We have never seen such rapid investment in the London legal market like Paul Weiss’s recruitment spree since 2023. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, the firm's London headcount tripled and its estimated…
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Have litigation funders been chasing a busted flush?
Send us Fan Mail On the surface, litigation funding and class actions are booming in the UK. Over the past five years, dozens of class actions have been filed in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) and just at the…
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What law firms aren’t telling you about AI
Send us Fan Mail News broke last week that the first ever AI law firm had been given the green light by the SRA. The rush by law firms to adopt Artificial Intelligence has been the standout feature of the past two…
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Trump v BigLaw, part three: Where's your line in the sand?
Send us Fan Mail Trump’s attacks on some of America’s most famous law firms has set in motion a chain of events that has thrown the world of BigLaw into chaos. In episode three of The Lawyer Podcast's mini-series on…
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Trump v BigLaw, part two: Deal or no deal?
Send us Fan Mail Trump’s attacks on some of America’s most famous law firms has set in motion a chain of events that has thrown the world of BigLaw into chaos. On this second episode of our podcast mini-series,…
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Trump v BigLaw, part one: Crisis
Send us Fan Mail Trump’s attacks on some of America’s most famous law firms has set in motion a chain of events that has thrown the world of BigLaw into chaos. Across the course of three episodes, The Lawyer Podcast…
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Your firm may not be interested in private equity, but private equity is interested in your firm
Send us Fan Mail Law firm listings are out of fashion, but private equity interest in firms has never been higher. With more deals already struck this year, The Lawyer Podcast crew sets out the state of PE investment…
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Could you hack it as a startup GC?
Send us Fan Mail Dynamic. Modern. Exciting. From Revolut to Bloom & Wild, Darktrace to Fever, startups are increasingly the place to be in the UK - and that is the case for lawyers too. So as the potential avenues…
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Does Linklaters’ exit spell the end for the Magic Circle in Eastern Europe?
Send us Fan Mail Poland’s GDP per capita could surpass Japan’s next year and may exceed the UK’s by the end of the decade. Such statistics help explain why the Eastern European nation is seeing an influx of…
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Absolute scenes: Freshfields, Willkie and how Merricks v Mastercard bankrolled the litigation market
Send us Fan Mail £20m is a number most recently associated with top private equity partners, but that’s the amount a team from Willkie Farr & Gallagher has been paid for its work on the iconic Merricks v Mastercard…
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Law firm sustainability in the age of Trump
Send us Fan Mail As Donald Trump and his allies put corporate ESG on both sides of the Atlantic in their crosshairs, is now the time for law firms to stand up and prove that their sustainability programmes are not…
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We need to talk about Latham
Send us Fan Mail Losing more than a dozen partners in a year isn’t good for any firm, but it’s particularly bad if you are a top of the market type practice like Latham & Watkins. But after such a stumble in London…
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When litigation gets big, who you gonna call?
Send us Fan Mail The Lawyer Podcast is back with for 2025! Every January for the past 15 years, The Lawyer has published its Top 20 Cases to look out for in the coming year. Each year’s list boasts of the skill and…
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Christmas Special: Is someone you know a workaholic?
Send us Fan Mail It's less than a week until Christmas and across the country, fires are blazing, trees are twinkling and pigs in blankets are roasting. But in offices, lawyers still have their noses to the…
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Five smaller firms to watch for good or for ill
Send us Fan Mail Editors Catrin Griffiths, Christian Smith and Richard Simmons are back to reveal the five firms in the second hundred of the UK200 they are watching in the coming years – for good or for ill. Tune in…
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The HSF merger: Two firms do not a transatlantic powerhouse make
Send us Fan Mail The announcement that Herbert Smith Freehills would merge with US firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel has got chins wagging across the transatlantic market. But is this a new mega-firm in the vein…
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How Kirkland is shaking up the European order
Send us Fan Mail It is a moment of change for the European legal market. With firms like Kirkland and Paul Hastings making major recent moves in the EU, US firms are starting to seriously disrupt the European order.…
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UK 200 Special: What we really think of Freshfields, BCLP and Osborne Clarke
Send us Fan Mail In part two of our two-part podcast series, celebrating the 20th edition of The Lawyer's UK200, editors Catrin Griffiths, Christian Smith, Matt Byrne, Katy Dowell and Richard Simmons are back to…
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UK 200 Special: UK law firms fight back
Send us Fan Mail If this year's UK200 is anything to go by, the majority of UK law firms are in robust health. Indeed, they are finally fighting back against the growth of US competitors. So why are so many upending…
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Is the A&O Shearman honeymoon over?
Send us Fan Mail Last week, A&O Shearman set out post-merger plans to close its legacy Allen & Overy base in Johannesburg, reduce its partnership by 10 per cent by the end of the financial year, and sell its…
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Why lawyers now control football
Send us Fan Mail Football law has typically been the domain of sports specialists. However, in recent years, there has been a growing number of large, elite firms and chambers entering the football market. Clifford…
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