Editors' Blog

Mark Stephens beats David Cheyne, weirdly

Posted 10/10/2007 by Alex Novarese

Legal Week observed recently that the success story of City law firms in the British economy is still going comprehensively unsung outside the legal goldfish bowl. Well, fresh proof of just how badly underweight commercial lawyers are punching in terms of recognition and profile comes this week in the shape of a list-based opus from the Evening Standard.

If you haven’t seen it, the booklet published this week lists the 1,000 most influential people in London. Of course, there’s a section on law and it’s not going to be a shock to find that deal lawyers are not dominating the list.

There are the usual suspects, with a heavy slant to Bench and Bar. Bingham, Sands, Pannick and the fabulous Baroness Scotland are all present. Fair enough. But move down the list and it all starts getting a bit shaky. Apparently, in modern London, the legal profession is now defined by celebrity divorce lawyers.

And who is representing the City? Er, David Cheyne. Celebrated as Linklaters’ senior partner is as one of the finest M&A lawyers of his generation, it hardly seems fair that he now has to carry the weight of the entire City legal community on his shoulders. Hasn’t he got enough on his plate with the German restructuring? At least Esquire’s recent spread on cool work-places found space for Slaughters and SJs.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making fun of the Standard (even though I’m more of a London Lite man) - these kind of lists do pretty accurately represent how the profession is viewed in the outside world.

Several billions pounds in invisible earnings contributed to the UK economy– who cares? About 100,000 UK jobs and helping the City become a world-class finance centre – so what, we’ve got Mark Stephens on the line.

Many in the profession would debate whether this matters but that looks pretty myopic. I can’t think of another substantial industry that enjoys so little traction with policy-makers. Given that there is unprecedented reform of legal services in the works, not to mention a deeply controversial shake-up of legal aid, the Government must feel glad that it has a sizeable constituency that it can so safely ignore.

alex.novarese@legalweek.com