Insurance giants are no longer afraid to sue competitors over ‘team poaching’ January 15, 2026 London’s insurance sector is becoming increasingly litigious as the battle for niche talent intensifies, after a wave of High Court cases suggests ‘team poaching’ has become a legal flashpoint. If, like me, you are glued to the court filing system, you’ll have seen a noticeable uptick in lawsuits over restrictive covenants going to London’s High [...]
Game, set, appeal: Wimbledon’s £200m expansion hits the court January 14, 2026 The battle over Wimbledon’s £200m expansion has reached match point: while tournament chiefs aim for a net gain of 39 new courts, a campaign group is fighting back by dragging the planning decision to the Court of Appeal. The All England Lawn Tennis Ground plans to build 39 new tennis courts and an 8,000-seat stadium [...]
Immigration law firm put up for sale on insolvency market amid visa crackdown January 13, 2026 A London law firm specialising in immigration services has been put up for sale on an insolvency marketplace in an early sign the government’s crackdown on visas has sparked a slump in applications. Woolwich-based A Vincent Solicitors, which employs more than two dozen staff and has a second office in Manchester, offered multi-lingual support services [...]
OpenAI could face more hurdles for IPO than Anthropic January 12, 2026 As artificial intelligence giants inch towards the public markets, copyright litigation is becoming an increasingly influential factor in how investors assess risk. And with that in mind, Anthropic appears to be starting from a less complicated position than its larger rival, OpenAI. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence have said the Claude founder faces “significantly less legal [...]
Ropes & Gray offers junior lawyers 20 per cent billable credit for AI effort January 9, 2026 US law firm Ropes & Gray has expanded its programme to give junior lawyers 20 per cent of their billable hours to experiment with generative AI to its European offices, including in the City. The ‘TrAIlblazers’ programme was floated across the firm’s US offices last year, but it is now being implemented in Europe for [...]
London’s legal elites bask in booming pay packets January 8, 2026 While London shivers through a January cold snap, the city’s legal elite are basking in an earnings heatwave as salaries for City lawyers at major law firms have edged up over the last year. Over the 2024/2025 financial year, the average profit per equity partner (PEP) at the big firms, including Linklaters, A&O Shearman, Herbert [...]
Legal firm faces “material uncertainty” after publishing overdue accounts January 7, 2026 After months of delay, the law firm behind the largest action to hit the London High Court published its 2023 financial accounts, which revealed an annual loss of £95m. Pogust Goodhead’s 2023 account, published on Companies House on Monday, four months past the deadline, showed turnover decreased sharply to £3,607,387, down from £53,077,800 in 2022. [...]
Grok scandal exposes Online Safety Act flaws January 7, 2026 The UK’s relatively new Online Safety Act was sold as its long-overdue answer to the alarming harms of social media. Brits were promised a framework tough enough to bar Silicon Valley access, tough enough to promote innovation, and strong enough to keep its users, particularly children, from digital abuse. Barely months into its rollout, controversial [...]
Ex-Jefferies banker pleads not guilty in FCA insider dealing case January 7, 2026 A former banker at investment bank Jefferies pleaded not guilty to one count of insider dealing ahead of a trial listed for January 2028. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) revealed in November that it started criminal proceedings against Bobosher Sharipov, 44, and Bekzod Avazov, 43, for alleged insider dealing. Sharipov worked at investment bank Jefferies [...]
Scathing report blames MoJ for wasting public funds and failing justice system January 7, 2026 A new scathing Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) revealed that a cyberattack last year at the Legal Aid Agency gave hackers access to sensitive providers’ and data for four months. There was a cyberattack on the Legal Aid Agency last year that took the services offline for some time [...]