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Business of Law seminars

For over eight years Allen & Overy has hosted a series of popular seminars on The Business of Law

​With audiences of over 100 people, these seminars debate the biggest issues facing law firms, in-house lawyers and the legal profession as a whole.

Recent seminars have attracted top speakers from the Financial Times, the BBC, GE, Rio Tinto, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, KPMG, Accenture and GlaxoSmithKline. In addition previous panels have included representatives of governments and international organisations, as well as prominent academics, lawyers and leading industry figures from around the world.

Our most recent seminar

"Managing a global professional services firm ... dark art or exact science?" (Tuesday, 5 March 2013)
This seminar highlighted and debated the challenges of managing global professional services firms, including effective leadership, harnessing culture, matrix structures and collective responsibility for delivering on strategy.
 
 

Next event

Our next Business of Law seminar will be on the afternoon of Monday, 10 June 2013 and will be entitled "Business as usual? The commercial impact of Human Rights.
 
In June 2011 the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, the foundation of which is that businesses have a “responsibility to respect human rights”. The responsibility to respect is now referred to in a range of other international instruments from the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises to the U.S. government authorisations for foreign investment in Myanmar. Our keynote speaker, Judge Richard Goldstone, will explain why human rights issues are becoming much more central in the operations of business. This will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by Allen & Overy’s senior partner David Morley that will provide insights from leading in-house practitioners involved in implementing the UN Guiding Principles on what the responsibility to respect means for business and the role of both in-house lawyers and external counsel in helping businesses navigate their human rights responsibilities.

Past events 

"Your invention? My creation! Intellectual Property – a new "bet the company" battleground" (4 September 2012)

Read a report on this seminar.

Beyond 50 degrees East – challenges and opportunities in high growth markets

Read the report on this seminar (pdf).

'Leadership in the new regulatory environment: is the CEO becoming the Chief Risk Officer?'

 
14th Global CEO Survey 'Growth reimagined - Prospects in emerging markets drive CEO confidence' (pdf), published by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
 
Article 'Love Thy Lawyer' (pdf), published in The Wall Street Journal on 20 December 2006.
 
Article 'Corporate Europe must Improve Compliance' (pdf), published by The Financial Times on 26 May 2008.
 

'The globalisation challenge - balancing risk and opportunity' (6 September 2011)

 In this seminar we asked, can law firms and their clients chart and navigate the fast changing tides of global economic power? Is globalisation now irreversible or will new shocks throw it into reverse? Read a report on the key issues that arose from the discussion (pdf).

'Are lawyers really cut out to be strategic advisers?' (6 December 2010)

Read our report on key issues from the debate (pdf).

'Broadening access to the Legal Profession - rhetoric or reality?' (21 April 2010)

Read our report on key issues from the seminar (pdf).

Learn more about the Smart Start Experience - our  scheme to broaden access to the professions. 

Read the report produced by the Panel on Fair Access to the Profession report (pdf), chaired by Alan Milburn. Published in 2009, it deals with recommendations to improve social mobility by acting at every life stage - including through schools, universities, internship practices and recruitment processes.

Read The Sutton Trust briefing note (pdf) on the educational backgrounds of the UK's top solicitors, barristers and judges, which includes some fairly stark statistics on educational background of leading solicitors and barristers and was one of the catalysts for the Pathways to Law project (widely regarded as the flagship broadening access project in our profession).

Read The Sutton Trust submission to the Milburn commission on access to the professions (pdf).

'Law firm workforce of the future - sacrificing culture for efficiency?' (22 September 2009)

 Read a brief report on the key issues that arose from the roundtable discussion (pdf).

Read the 2009 Chief Legal Officer Survey (pdf) conducted annually by Altman Weil, Inc., which reports ongoing, incremental change in corporate law departments in response to the new economic landscape, but a deep skepticism that their law firm counterparts are equally serious about change.

 'Are there better ways to regulate the legal profession?' (22 February 2009)

 Read the paper dealing with the key issues that were discussed at the seminar (pdf).

Read the Smedley report (pdf): a review of the regulation of corporate law firms in England and Wales, conducted by Nick Smedley and commissioned by The Law Society of England & Wales.

Read a paper on the regulation of the legal profession in the United States and the future of global law practice (pdf) prepared by Anthony Davis from Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, one of the speakers at our seminar.

 'External investors in law firms – opportunity or threat?' (24 November 2008)

 Read the report dealing with the key issues that were discussed at the seminar (pdf).

Earlier seminars

'Moving Corporate Responsibility into the legal mainstream' (23 April 2008)
'Measuring law firm success' (15 November 2007)
'Will liberalisation change the structure of the European legal profession?' (4 June 2007)
'The financial and business impact of the regulation of legal services' (23 May 2006)
'Competition in the provision of legal services - in collaboration with the European Commission' (4 July 2005)
'Law firm leadership - Setting new standards - in collaboration with the IBA' (20th June 2005)

 

 
 

Register your interest

These seminars are invitation-only events. To register your interest in attending, please email your name and organisation to: stephen.denyer@allenovery.com and isabell.zimmer@allenovery.com.​



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