Many in-house counsel will say that the attraction of the job comes from having greater influence on their business and this is also true for Alice Marsden, group general counsel of Thomas Cook Group. However, the real draw for her comes from sometimes getting to have an altogether more personal impact.
To coincide with the 20th annual Legal Business Awards, a launch reception was held on 23 March to mark the launch of our fifth annual GC Powerlist which, under the unifying title The Clients of Tomorrow, looked at both the outstanding rising star in-house counsel and high-growth companies with the prospects of becoming the global …
In a world where newspapers are branding judges ‘enemies of the people’ and fake news dominates public discourse, these days the media itself is the story.
‘There are known knowns… There are known unknowns… but there are also unknown unknowns.’
‘When I initiated discussions on our culture at partners’ meetings, I could see the faces of many of my former partners light up, not for the reasons I hoped, but from the reflected glow of their BlackBerrys. They saw an excellent opportunity to catch up on more pressing issues, while I, to their minds, embarked …
At a recent event for senior in-house counsel in London, two clear messages emerged. Firstly, that there is a rapid professionalisation in the way that major legal departments are managing themselves. Secondly, there was agreement that much of the support for change was being driven from the ‘alternative’ legal market. Despite this, there was a …
For classists, the word ‘disruptive’ still carries negative connotations of damage, chaos and disarray. But these days in corporate circles it has become the phrase of the day – a complimentary shorthand to describe tech-driven innovators remaking all manner of industries. But the cult of disruption – birthed in Clayton Christensen’s hugely influential 1997 book …
In her much-touted new book on bolstering team-working in professional services, Smart Collaboration, Harvard Law School professor Heidi Gardner argues that sophisticated buyers are increasingly expecting an open-house approach from advisers in delivering their wares.
DAC Beachcroft and The In-House Lawyer recently conducted a survey to assess the role and influence of the in-house lawyer in managing risk. Is the role that of ringmaster – right at the heart of the matter – or more a side-line prompt? Essentially does the legal department have the necessary influence, associations, and information …
While fintech has generated a lot of attention in recent years, it is not actually new. From ATMs to contactless payments, technology has been influencing the financial sector and the way we interact with money for decades. So why the recent surge of interest and what has Scotland got to do with it?
‘When fintech became a big thing the narrative was all about the banks being disrupted and the threat to their business model,’ says Martin Cook, UK general counsel at Funding Circle, one of the world’s most successful peer-to-peer lenders. ‘There has since been a shift toward what might be called “fintech 2.0”, with a less …
It is difficult to work in financial services and not hear the word ‘fintech’ on a daily basis. But what is fintech and why the hype? In its purest form fintech is the fusion of financial services and technology. There is also ‘insurtech’ (the use of technology in insurance) and ‘regtech’ (the use of technology …
Continue reading “The fintech primer: what’s driving the revolution?”