Navigating the unknown: How Hogan Lovells advises businesses in an unpredictable world
With the increased geopolitical risks and unpredictability businesses face, regulatory and public law specialised lawyers at American-British law firm Hogan Lovells are in the spotlight.
But few lawyers in the City can say, ‘I built a public law practice from scratch,’ like partner Charles Brasted.
Then again, there aren’t many who are as passionate about public law quite like him.
Speaking to City AM, he explained that when he was a fresh-faced lawyer, he ended up “building something that doesn’t exist,” which was a public law team in a City law firm.
The firm, then known as Lovells, “was willing to say to a newly qualified lawyer, ‘Yeah, you can be part of building an entire new practice that we don’t really have at the moment and other City law firms don’t have’—which was amazing.”
As reported last February, Hogan Lovells’ global revenue jumped nearly 10 per cent over 2023, surpassing £2bn for the first time.
Having this practice comes at a good time for the firm. As Brasted noted, there has always been unpredictability, with the most successful businesses often driven by the extent of how well they can manage that.
However, he did note that “more of the world is more unpredictable than usual”.
Especially for international businesses, Brasted highlighted that for US clients, “you can sometimes assume” they will know how to navigate an environment like the UK and deal with US politics and policies; however, as he stated, the UK is “actually complex.”
“It’s very nuanced and always changing,” he stated.
Focus on policy experience
The practice started with a focus on judicial review work, but over time, the team realised that they could get ahead of most disputes and shape the outcome before they reached that stage.
“The public sector is on one side and the private sector on the other, and both need to work together for the best policy outcome,” he explained.
This is why the firm started recruiting non-lawyers with backgrounds in policy work.
Currently, the team has three members: Robert Gardener, director of government affairs, and formally a civil servant in the Cabinet Office. Nikki da Costa, director of legislative affairs, formally at Number 10. And most recently, Ed Roberts joined as a senior policy adviser, formally at Deliveroo.
The offering to clients bridges the gap between law, business, and policy, but the sector that needs this legal advice the most is the tech sector.
Brasted explained that with the pace of innovation in the tech sector, “the complexity on the business side is high.”
“There is inevitable friction where policy-making and legislative processes move at a certain pace, and businesses that are moving faster than that”.
“It’s not that they’re in opposition to each other, but this is complex, novel stuff, and it moves quickly, which is hard to manage on both sides,” he continued.
He stated that this friction creates one of the strongest factors in determining how people like his team of lawyers will most likely add value for businesses.
From a firm perspective, he noted the team is in a “very luxurious position to be in to worry about what we enjoy, rather than simply what we might be able to get”.
But going forward, he stated that “most businesses still haven’t fully integrated how they think about government affairs and policy and how they think about law.”
The firm’s practice is keen to get “more of our clients to understand the integration” of government relations and public affairs with public law.
One of Brasted clients is the Gambling Commission. He has acted for the department in headline-grabbing legal cases stemming from the new Lottery license awarded to Allwyn in 2022.
He is currently defending the Commission against a lawsuit by a British publishing group owned by media baron Richard Desmond. The case is expected to be back in the High Court this week over disclosure issues.