The two-month internship, which began last month, currently has a cohort of two. Both interns are future trainees of Clifford Chance and were selected from the firm’s 2017 Springboard programme, an initiative aimed at aspiring lawyers in their first year of university.

Interns will divide their eight-week stint between the product, marketing, business development and operations functions of Lexoo and will also receive training in coding and data analytics. The future trainees will receive the princely sum of £450 a week for their efforts, which is the same amount as their peers on the Clifford Chance vacation scheme.

Clifford Chance graduate recruitment head Laura Yeates added:

“With innovation firmly on the agenda in the boardroom, we are pleased that this investment is being seen at every level of the firm, from partners to future trainees. The legal industry is evolving with new challenge and new opportunities. In order to give our clients the best service today and in the future, we are committed to ensuring our lawyers have the skills needed for a successful career.”

In April, Clifford Chance launched its Tech Academy, offering employees and fee earners a variety of online resources and face-to-face workshops which focus on technology concepts and developments such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, coding, cybersecurity and data privacy.

London-based Bloomsbury AI, which has built a tool that can read documents and answer questions about them, is joining the social media giant in a deal reportedly worth between $23m and $30m. Facebook has confirmed the move but would not comment on its value.

The deal will involve acquiring the 11-strong team at Bloomsbury in what is known as an ‘acquire-hire’: buying a company for the expertise of its staff rather than its offering. Bloomsbury’s founders have extensive academic backgrounds in AI.

The start-up was founded last year and had raised nearly $1.4m from various funds and angel investors, including musician Matt Bellamy from rock band Muse. While not specifically legal tech, Bloomsbury joined A&O’s innovation hub Fuse in May this year as one of the firm’s second cohort of companies in the hub.

The company was chosen from 80 applications, and the second cohort – also including well-known names Kira Systems and Neota Logic – had a strong AI focus. Fuse chairman Jonathan Brayne said A&O was unlikely to replace Bloomsbury in the cohort. A&O does not take equity stakes in its Fuse businesses.

He commented: ‘We are incredibly proud that one of our cohort has attracted the attention of Facebook, a company that will no doubt help it reach its full potential. We work very closely with the companies in Fuse, we get to know the people, the business and the ideas and so we feel confident that this is an excellent move for Bloomsbury AI and we wish them all the best.’

Fintech company Regnosys and AI business Signal Media were the other new names to join Fuse in May, while incumbents Avvoka, Legatics and Nivaura transferred over. Brayne added: ‘The seven remaining companies in Fuse continue to challenge, excite and inspire us and so we look forward to what these relationships will bring.’

It has been speculated Facebook is interested in using Bloomsbury to help combat fake news concerns on the social media platform. A Facebook statement said: ‘Their expertise will strengthen Facebook’s efforts in natural language processing research, and help us further understand natural language and its applications. The team will help us grow our AI efforts in London, joining a roster of strong engineering talent.’

Bloomsbury has not responded to requests for comment.

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The UK top 20 firm’s new base will open in September with an initial team of 11 lawyers and business support staff. Taylor Wessing will appoint a partner to lead the new office and aims to grow the team to 25 by the end of the year – consisting of 10 legal and 15 non-legal roles. They will all be new roles for the firm.

But the jobs of three permanent City business acceptance staff are under consultation as a result of the move. The firm said in a statement affected staff will be given ‘the opportunity and financial support to relocate if they wish to’, and that moving to Liverpool was an opportunity to invest more in the team.

The Liverpool team will initially be working in flexible premises until a permanent office space is found, with the next steps to be announced next year. The office will assist lawyers with opening new client matters, as well as carrying out due diligence and conflict review.

Managing partner Tim Eyles said he saw the new outpost as ‘a catalyst for long-term reinvention to continue to deliver a better service, being smart with our resources and continuing to invest in more people – we will need them’.

He told Legal Business: ‘We did a lot of research and we concluded there is a great pool of talent across the North West, great connectivity and a whole spirit of creativity and innovation around Liverpool as a tech hub, consistent with one of our focus areas.’

The firm chose Liverpool because of the local talent pool, universities and its reputation as one of the fastest growing technology hubs in the country.

The Liverpool launch comes off the back of a strong financial year at Taylor Wessing, which in 2017/18 posted 12% revenue growth to £144.6m for its UK business and 12% growth in its international network to £301.5m. UK profits per equity partner (PEP) grew 20% to hit £579,000.

A number of firms have launched low-cost centres in the UK recently, with Clifford Chance entering Newcastle through the acquisition of Carillion’s in-house legal arm, while Reed Smith opened an outpost in Leeds.

The low cost centres have inevitably impacted City business support staff, with Hogan Lovells announcing last month it will cut 54 of its circa 500 business support jobs in London in favour of new roles in Johannesburg, Louisville and Birmingham.

Ashurst also launched a redundancy review in May which could result in 80% of its 100-strong secretarial team in London being axed, while Pinsent Masons began a consultation on cutting 100 non-legal jobs last year. Ince & Co announced in June it was to cut 30 roles, primarily impacting its business service ranks.

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The firm’s revenue for the last financial year was £564m, up from £541m, while PEP stood at £743,000 compared with £672,000 in 2017.

The results mark a second year of growth following two consecutive years of decline that followed the City stalwart’s merger with Australia’s Blake Dawson in 2013.

Managing partner Paul Jenkins (pictured) told Legal Business that the 11% year-on-year PEP growth just exceeded his target. ‘We were aiming for 10% growth and we have achieved that over each of the last two years, so we are very happy with the result. We have focused on areas of strength for profitable growth and driving cost efficiency and innovation in service delivery.’

The firm’s core sectors are real estate, infrastructure, energy, digital economy and banks and funds. 85% of the firm’s revenue was generated via these sectors in 2017/18, compared with 80% of total revenue the previous year.

Jenkins noted that Asia Pacific has continued to perform well. ‘We have achieved double-digit revenue growth in Australia and China put in an excellent performance in a year in which we also launched a Joint Operating Office in Shanghai with Guantao. Demonstrating our ongoing investment in Singapore, we also established a formal law alliance with ADTLaw.’

He also pointed to ‘double-digit revenue growth across key practices in the UK’ and progress in the Middle East, which ‘continued to grow substantially,’ and ‘impressive results with growth across all practice areas’ in Germany. He added that Asia market would continue to be a strategic focus for the firm, while the US infrastructure market has also yielded particular success. The firm has identified opportunities in acting for Chinese banks on outbound investment in Europe and Australia.

Jan Gooze-Zijl, the firm’s chief financial and operations officer, also identified Luxembourg as an area of growth on the back of Brexit and to capitalise on funds activity. The firm last week secured licence approval for a new Luxembourg outpost, which is set to open in October.

Jenkins also said the firm has seen particularly strong performance in its dispute resolution, real estate, competition, regulatory and employment businesses. Restructuring and special situations has also seen very high levels of activity across Europe, as has corporate and banking in London. Technology is also expected to remain a priority. In April, the firm hired GE Capital International’s IT director Noel Jordan as its chief technology officer.

Jenkins concluded: ‘I am confident that our strong trajectory will continue in FY19. In the last two years, we have focused on achieving sustained revenue and profit improvement. There are many significant prospects and opportunities that lie ahead as we build on our achievements as a high-performance and collaborative firm committed to operating at the forefront of change in the industry.’

The firm made 31 lateral hires during the year and promoted 24 internal candidates to partner. The firm also fared considerably better than its peers when it came to gender diversity, with 58% of the partners it made up being female.

Some key mandates for Ashurst during the year have included advising Aveva Group on its £3bn combination with Schneider Electric’s industrial software business and acting for an infrastructure investor consortium fronted by Dalmore Capital on its acquisition of Cory Riverside Energy, the owner of the UK’s largest energy-from-waste plant in London, for more than £1.5bn.

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The scheme awards five UK-based aspiring solicitors £2,500 each year for use towards the cost of their law degree. Sarah Hyde, Of Counsel solicitor and founder of the CMS Bursary scheme explains: “At CMS, we believe that a career in law should be open to people from all walks of life, if that is what they want to do and if their potential measures up’.

In addition to the monetary award, finalists receive mentoring from a qualified lawyer and have the opportunity to complete paid work experience at the firm.

Since its inception in 2011, the scheme has presented 26 students with a financial grant and has seen over 70 receive mentoring. “We are proud to see the difference the scheme is making to students, at a critical point in their lives as they transition to University” says Hyde.

To be considered for a bursary, students will need to partake in an essay writing competition. Successful applicants will then be invited to attend an interview at CMS’ London or Edinburgh office in September 2018. The deadline for applications is 29 June 2018 (Scotland) or 18 July 2018 (rest of UK). To apply, click here.

Corporate partner Isabelle Lentz – currently head of the firm’s Luxembourg desk in London -will take the helm at the new outpost, which is set to open in October.

The move is designed to bolster the firm’s position in the funds market and also take advantage of opportunities posed by Brexit as businesses transfer to the Grand Duchy.

Ashurst is hiring for the new office, with a view to having between 15 and 20 legal and business services staff ensconced within a year of opening.

Paul Jenkins, managing partner, said: ‘As a leading investment fund centre in Europe, the second largest globally in terms of assets under management and a hub for international banks and fintech, the opportunities in Luxembourg are significant. Growing our offering and building on the proven track record of our established Luxembourg desk is an exciting prospect and one which will greatly enhance our client service offering.’

Lentz added: ‘Over recent years, Luxembourg has secured it status as a key financial centre and as one of the frontrunners of preferred EU locations for transfer of business related to Brexit, that is only set to increase. I am really looking forward to capitalising on this by developing our presence in Luxembourg and enhancing our capability.’

The firm’s Luxembourg desk in London was set up in 2011 and advises on corporate, private equity, funds, restructuring, regulatory, real estate and banking matters. Recent mandates for the five-strong desk have included advising investor Digital Colony on its April 2018 acquisition from First State Investments on Digita Oy, the owner and operator of digital terrestrial television and radio broadcasting tower infrastructure network in Finland.

Other recent mandates have seen the team advise US fund Castlelake on the restructuring of a number of Luxembourg companies ahead of the IPO of property developer Aedas Homes, Aviva Investors and Shard Capital on the establishment of unregulated private debt funds, Nordic private equity shop CapMan Real Estate on its €425m fund raising of a private FCP- RAIF fund and the banks on a bridge financing for fund manager EQT.

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Thanks to the pegging of Kirkland’s UK salaries to the dollar, the firm’s London-based juniors will now earn the staggering annual sum of £143,000. This follows a $10,000 hike in the salaries of its US lawyers from $180,000 to $190,000.

The move follows a similar uptick in salary announced by Milbank, Tweed , Hadley & McCloy earlier this month.

To find out how much you could earn as a trainee and NQ solicitor, check out The Lex 100’s ‘How much will I earn’ salary table.

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