Edward Fennell

Ok, so ABS Day wasn't quite the Big Bang some had predicted, but there were a couple of noteworthy events that happened on the day. For me the highlight was the launch of Edward Fennell's new monthly online column in The Times, in which he plans to profile an 'ABS'-impacted business each edition.

I spoke to Edward about his new column when we met a couple of weeks ago - but he had asked me to keep it under wraps until it was launched.


"I'm not so much interested in Alternative Businesses per se," he said. "The point of the column is more about looking at traditional legal businesses that are having to do something different, either in their business strategy, or the way the business is structured, in response to the advent of ABSs".  Also, he says, the Legal Services Act generally and to some extent other market-changing regulation such as Jackson on litigation costs." 

The first edition launched this week on ABS day (6 October). If you missed it on the day, you can find it here.


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...but the first ABS has now emerged on to the market. On the day that the Council for Licensed Conveyancers became the first Approved Regulator able to license these new entities, the first ABS law firm came into being: Premier Property Lawyers, a Leicester- based wholly-owned subsidiary of myhomemove.


...and the first UK law firm announced plans for a stock market flotation: Oxfordshire-based firm Everyman Legal


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Sadly, another obituary this week. But a review of the week would be incomplete without mentioning the death of Steve Jobs. Our papers and screens have been full of tributes to how his ideas have transformed the way many of us work and live. "He made technology fun - and he made it beautiful" is typical of the sentiments expressed by a very broad - and global - public. 


The images of the innovative forms that some of the tributes are taking are particularly arresting. A candlelight 'app' vigil in Tokyo, a farewell carved into an apple in California...

Opinion in our office is divided as to whether this outpouring of global grief is proportionate. "He's not family, or a close friend, after all." The BBC's News Magazine has written an interesting piece on just this, which you can read here. But clearly for some, the man changed their lives.

Connie Chen

Connie Chen has an interesting perspective on doing business in China.  Based in Holman Fenwick's Sydney office (one of the firm's three Australian offices), Connie specialises in international corporate and commercial transactions and China-related investments in particular.  Her role requires an insight into both.  She talks of the classic divide we have all read about - the west's focus on productivity levels, profit and cashflow: the east's preoccupation with businesses 'doing social good'. A case of never the twain shall meet? She describes the rude awakening for many western companies in China when the credit crunch hit, forced to realise what this difference really means in practice when blocked from making redundancies to balance the books again. But what I find fascinating is her view of the changing perceptions in these straitened times of the west by the east, and of the east by the west.

What some western companies are starting to question is whether there might in fact be  commercial as well as social benefits to be gained from not making redundancies: more stability, not just in the individual company but their broader business community too, stronger staff loyalty, etc. Some are saying these companies will come out of the recession in a stronger competitive position than those that made harsher personnel decisions. Is there a leaf western businesses could take out of the communists' book.

Eastern business are learning lessons from the west too, she says, particularly with commercial contracts.  The west famously has an insistence that everything be governed by the letter of the contract and a very legalistic approach that is rather frowned upon by easterners, who prefer to limit contracts to expressing broad parameters only, expecting the detail - and any differences - to be sorted out by relationships, discussion, negotiation, and trust between the parties. With so much contract wrangling taking place now thanks to the credit crunch, she says that some eastern business people are now seeing benefit in negotiating more detailed contracts at the outset, the parties articulating in finer detail how they see things, and looking at scenarios for what might go wrong, improving everyone's understanding of expectations and intentions at the start - even if in the event of a dispute the contract is ultimately set aside and the matter resolved through relationships and discussion in the old-fashioned eastern way.

Perhaps the twain between east and west is starting to meet after all...

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Exciting news from Shakespeare's Globe this week: an amazing initiative next Spring to bring all 37 of his plays - yes you heard that right: all 37 plays! - to the stage in one  six-week season, each performed in a different language. Great opportunities here for global firms to think of creative ideas for sponsorship and client hospitality. 

The Globe team has scoured the world to find exciting or novel productions.  As well as offerings from the heavyweight international theatre companies, there will be a rendition of Othello from Chicago in hip-hop form, a production of Love's Labour's Lost in British Sign Language and a version of Cymbeline from the world's newest country, South Sudan, which became an independent state only in July this year, after 50 years of conflict:  Apparently the pitch for the South Sudanese theater company included a heartbreaking note from the brand-new country’s presidential adviser on culture:  “I used to lie in the bush under the stars reading Shakespeare’s plays, not thinking about the killing that would take place in the morning.”  Powerful stuff, this Shakespeare.

If you missed the news of the Globe to Globe initiative this week you can catch up here.

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This month's Tweetinglegals tweetup was fun.  Thanks Shireen Smith (aka @Azrights) for organising. Some 50 legal tweeters met up on Monday night at The Old Bank of England in Fleet Street.  For anyone still unconvinced of the value of twitter in business, these tweetups, giving you the opportunity to make human contact with fellow tweeters, so make the point that networking online is not separate and mysterious from networking In Real life: the two go hand in hand.  

If you're good at networking in the real world, these social media platforms just open up new doors and expand opportunities.

Troy Davis

Troy Davis R.I.P.

Some events make nearly everything else pale into insignificance. News of Troy Davis' execution this week, and the first hand accounts from his death chamber, completely stopped me in my tracks.  

So this week I am devoting The Conversation to Troy Davis, a man silenced by the state.  

In 1991 Davis was convicted, then sentenced to death, for the 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia.  He and his family have protested his innocence from the first to the last - his final words this week were "I did not personally kill your son/father/brother... ".  The evidence relied on to convict him was highly dubious: no conclusive ballistics, the conviction relied on eye-witness accounts, several of which were  later recanted amidst claims of police coercion. Numerous pressure groups, notably Amnesty International, also politicians and celebrities including Jimmy Carter, Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mia Farrow and Susan Sarandon, have endorsed a campaign to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The UK Foreign Office has also supported the campaign and this week published a statement on its website issued by the European Union in response to Davis' execution, reaffirming 'its principled and longstanding opposition to the use of capital punishment under all circumstances'.

I remember attending an Amnesty event at Portcullis House when Troy's family came to the UK to speak to the Foreign Office.  Hearing the story direct from his sister and nephew brought home the tragedy in human - not just human rights - terms.  I was with Russell Jones & Walker partner Julie Morris who in a previous life had worked on a number of death row cases. She opened my eyes to some shocking statistics about America - the land of the free - and its record as a capital killer. Did you know it is one of the top 5 capital killers in the entire world, ranking right up there with China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen - and ahead of Saudi Arabia?

Most chilling of all the coverage of the event this week has to be the first hand accounts of the journalists present at the execution - as much part of the death chamber scene as the attendance of a medical officer. Personally I found the effect of their highly factual, objective accounts more disturbing than any of the more emotive reports I read during the course of the week.  If you missed these, you can read them here at Daily Mail Online. 


Makes you wonder how far we have really come in the modern world. But at least the fight goes on...

by Steve Bell, The Guardian

Alberto Saravalle

We had a surprise visitor from Milan this week, as Bonelli Erede Pappalardo senior partner Alberto Saravalle was unexpectedly called to London on client business. A perfect opportunity to line up some (very last minute) journalist meetings with national and legal press. So my treat was to spend half a day with this fascinating man.

Continental elite firm Bonelli is an international law firm that happens to be head-quartered in Italy, and although Italian by birth, Alberto is very much a 'global citizen'. Born and educated in Italy, he also studied both at Cambridge and at Yale, lived in Paris for a few years, also in New York where he still has a base, (and is licensed to practise at the New York Bar). He is a world class corporate and capital markets lawyer, but what struck me most in my conversations with Alberto were his views on the importance for lawyers - indeed anyone in a demanding business role - of having a hinterland, a life outside of work and an emphasis on one's own humanity.

His own interests are varied - from extreme sports, to film, to music and to fine art.  Also, in addition to his capital markets practice, he has an unusual specialism in art law, renown as the 'go to guy' (as The Times' Edward Fennell put it) on issues relating to the restoration of artworks after illegal sales - something that the world's major museums, particularly in the US, now realise they should resist. But most of all you see Alberto's philosophy in his descriptions of how he and other senior partners at Bonelli design the professional development and employee engagement programmes at the firm.

"I believe that with any business person who is at the top of his/her game, you will find they are so much more than a perfect technician, smart negotiator etc. They will be a powerful human being as well; the sort of person everyone's attention turns to when they enter a room, who clearly has a lot to say not just on matters of business - for that reason, a person of whom others are always keen to know what's in their mind.."

I can certainly think of a number of clients for whom this is true.  But is this how I see leaders in business, the City and politics generally?  Hmm.  I'm not so sure.  But it's certainly my view of Alberto.

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The wheels of the legal and regulatory machinery are certainly back in motion after the Summer recess. We had the MoJ give us the referral fees ban last week, followed this Monday by the Vickers Report, then later in the week we had more big banking litigation with the news the UK is now suing The European Central Bank over a regulatory change that would be prejudicial to the UK banking community. This week we also saw the brakes slammed on the Law Commission's review of cohabitation rights.

Family law is already so far behind the reality of modern day family life and relationships, this review of cohabitation rights was desperately needed to bring it up to date. The ditching of the review is a massive retrograde step.

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I won't name names, but loved this media tip from the managing partner of a big City firm:  "If my phone rings in a meeting and I see it's a client, I will wait to the end of the meeting to answer; if it's a bank lender, I'll ask my secretary to say I'll call back immediately after the meeting; if it's a journalist, I'll answer the call right away".   No wonder he's such a favourite with the media!

Sue Brown

Completely out of the blue, at the end of this week the MoJ announced a ban on referral fees.  Insurers welcomed the ban, but others felt the announcement was rather at odds with the Legal Services Board's conclusion that a total ban was inappropriate, and that instead the focus should be on creating greater transparency.
Prolegal's Sue Brown happened to be at our offices while it was all kicking off, so a brilliant opportunity to get her take on the issue first hand.  Sue is a highly experienced and market-leading claimant lawyer, and has very strong views that she is not afraid to put on the record.  She believes the ban will be extremely dangerous for consumers because, she says, insurers' enthusiasm for the ban has less to do with their distaste for 'treating clients as commodities to be bought and sold', and more to do with their having spotted an opportunity to remove independent solicitors from the process altogether.  Post Online's coverage of the story lead with Sue's comments, under the banner 'Prolegal warns MoJ over dangerous referral fee decision'.  Sue is clearly a woman to be approached with caution!


Prolegal has a reputation for doing things differently and their response to the referral fees ban was no exception.  In addition to the expert comment that Sue was only too happy to provide to the press, the firm decided to commission a cartoon.  We put them in touch with nationals-and-private-Eye regular Ken Pyne who at breath-taking speed produced this gem for us.  


Check out Prolegal's new website too - a dramatic change of image indicative of their move up-market, adding a range of high-value-add legal services to their commoditised offering.


* * *

Others had plenty to say on the ban as well, many coming from an altogether different point of view.  We were busy across the whole Kysen team placing comment from the London Solicitors Litigation Association, Parabis, and the Forum of Insurance Lawyers, who all had insightful points to make to further the debate.  


Our man Elliott here was particularly busy dealing with national and insurance press - at one point an enquiry from Channel 4 as well.  He thoroughly enjoyed himself - an exciting flurry of activity at the end of an already-busy week (or at least that's what he told me...)


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Light relief this week came in the form of Vogue Fashion's Night Out, a global event taking place in no less than 16 countries around the world including, of course, London (Covent Garden for the first time), Milan, Paris, New York.   Brilliant fun! Even though we only made it to two shops.  But when you're offered champagne, food and beauty treatments while you shop, where's the incentive to move on!  Thanks Betsey Johnson and The Sanctuary Spa!. 

Nicky Richmond

Straight-talking Nicky Richmond is a legal blogger to watch. I'd highly recommend you check out her blogs and twitter feed. Nicky is joint managing partner of boutique law firm Brecher and renown for telling it exactly as it is, whether advising clients and large-scale property finance transactions or sharing her views on the inner workings of the legal profession. Not surprisingly, clients and colleagues love Nicky for just this. You can get a taste of her inimitable style from her twitter feed, (her ID is 'saysitstraight') and her personal blog (entitled 'Saying It Straight').

What I find particularly skilful is how Nicky perfects adjusting her voice to suit different platforms. For example she blogs regularly for Estates Gazette, and these are highly entertaining reads. Take a look at this blog post about the 'Strange New Beasts' that are to be found in the property finance arena currently, and how parties looking for finance need to look in quite unusual places these days.  In addition she writes for the print edition: her blog pieces are sometimes reproduced in print, then followed by slightly more technical articles on the same topic for the professional pages, using an altogether more serious tone of voice. 

Different again is her personal blog Saying It Straight, ('as sure as eggs is eggs - food and law') where she recently wrote a hilarious piece about lawyers during 'Dog Days', being the days in August ending with the 24th 'defining a time period that is hot or stagnant, or marked by dull lack of progress'.  If you're involved in the legal profession, you'll find this amusing...

Follow Nicky and enjoy!


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International bank litigation kicked off in a big way this weekend with news that the US Federal Housing Finance Agency's has filed lawsuits against 17 foreign banks (including three in the UK) for allegedly misleading them over the quality of mortgages sold. 


Joe Lynam's piece for the BBC was masterful in its succinctness, summarising a highly complex area in a very short broadcast segment. An excellent case study in the structure and brevity of broadcast stories compared to print media.  

Watch video here.

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Exciting news for Kysen this week was our move to 22 Long Acre, in the heart of London's creative district, Covent Garden. The building we have moved to is the former headquarters of Channel 5. It's an inspiring place to work and we are all loving it.


We had some intriguing comments when we tweeted photos of the area, including some of the local street performers, and asked people to guess where we'd moved to. My favourite was in response to this photo: legal journo and academic @richardparnham tweeted 
 "I didn't know The Body Shop, or Kysen, had opened a branch in Narnia..." 
Well he does now!


My other favourite quote was from one of our staff after a client meeting on our new roof terrace:
"we need to bring in our sunglasses now we're working here."  
Not sure the English weather will allow this to become much of a problem!

Simon Edwards

Simon Edwards anticipates Somme-like slaughter

Another chap who doesn't pull his punches is Simon Edwards, proprietor of Prolegal.  Over the last six years, Simon has been building a very forward thinking legal business. Prolegal has all the good things of a traditional legal partnership - regulated advice, senior lawyers hired in from respected firms offering high-value-add in addition to commoditised services - but without the fusty business and decision-making structures that prevent so many firms from being responsive to market change and client needs:  Prolegal is a company rather than a partnership, with plans to make each practice area a separate LLP beneath the corporate umbrella, to give area heads the autonomy and flexibility to run their parts of the business as they see fit.

But you should hear him on the subject of regulation and the advent of ABSs, as I did this week. This man has very strong views!

"It's simply not a level playing field. The high level of regulation we have to comply with, and the level of insurance we have to stump up, is just a joke when you consider the new potential fly-by-nights who will be able to set up shop under an entirely different regulator and with an almost non-existent level of cover and scrutiny. We know there are people out there who think setting up a legal business is a piece of cake and who simply see the advent of ABSs as a licence to print money. They should have a very rude awakening. We are expecting a Somme-like slaughter as these business set up shop for a short stint before being closed down by the regulators - assuming of course the regulators have the resource to get round all the new entrants in the marketplace in good enough time. The tragedy is that the biggest casualties in all of this will be the consumers."

Quite an apocalyptic vision of the future. But sadly, he does have a point...

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Good to catch up with Evening Standard Court Reporter Paul Cheston.  Having got to know each other on various cases and stories over the years, one of  the things we enjoy doing from time to time is running media training together, focussed on ‘PR around cases’.  Rather than presenting to Kysen clients, this week Paul came in to coach the Kysen team.  Mayer Brown’s in-house PR Charlotte Ward joined us for the session, wanting to meet Paul in person as he’d quoted her partners in his coverage of the Star Wars case.

Always love Paul’s favourite example of a statement on the steps of court that won the war for the headlines, when the case itself was lost – Private Eye editor Ian Hislop after losing a defamation case to ripper wife Sonia Sutcliffe:

“If that’s justice, then I’m a banana”

The headlines ridiculed the decision to award Mrs Sutcliffe a then record-breaking £600,000 in damages to such an extent that she voluntarily offered to take only half.  The power of the press….

A more recent example of course was the Hackgate foam pie man this Summer on the steps of court after his conviction.  Even though he’d just been given a 6 week custodial sentence, his televised “I’d just like to say that this is the most humble day of my life”, beamed all over the world, managed to mock Rupert Murdoch all over again!

If you missed it, watch the video here

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News from the Edinburgh Festival which kicked off this week.  Oddest story so far is undoubtedly showbiz reports of John Malkovich no less, Oscar-winning actor of more than Than 70 years, personally handing out flyers on Edinburgh's Royal Mile for a show he's directing at the Festival: Julian Sands in a Celebration of Harold Pinter.

As Mr Malkovich is working so hard to promote the show, we thought we'd give him a hand.

You can buy your tickets here