Magic Circle

I think, I think kind of within the, within the data, our data, there was a c- there was a few kind of, um, figures sort of that really stood out and I, I think the big, and we've got some, we, we, we, we've got some editorial pieces that you've seen on the site about this.

Um, but the, the big one that really stood out was, um, was Magic Circle firm Linklaters going from a hundred training contracts down, down to sixty.

Um, and that's, that's, and, and that's kind of out of step with the other Magic Circle firms, mostly who are kind of flat.

Um, um, but what, what's not, what, what it's easy to miss is Linklaters have been like the leading, the elite city firm on solicitor apprenticeships, and they've launched a very high-profile program and taking, they, they were initially taking eight solicitor apprentices a, a year.

Um, I think, I think they launched that a couple of years ago, twenty twenty-four.

Um, um, but, um, yeah, I mean, that, that's, that's what's hap- that, what's that, that's predominantly what's happened there.

It might, there might be a bit of AI in that on the margins.

Um, it might be a bit about kind of horizon scanning the economy, but you know, if you, if you, you know, you, you're comparing to the other Magic Circle, kind of.

At investor roadshows and events designed for resource exploration companies to meet financiers in the City of London, I was struck by how often guest speakers would advise companies to ensure they had arbitration provisions in place before investing in supposedly difficult countries.

On one occasion, I attended a training workshop for UK investors where a partner from a Magic Circle law firm advised attendees on how to creatively use ISDS to protect their investments, using an example from an old case that involved Bangladesh.

Later, at an event organised by lawyers based in Dhaka, this same case study came up again.

But this time, it was treated completely differently.

And a lot of the people that I interviewed that were sort of lawyers or people working there, as civil servants in the parastatal oil and gas companies made reference to this and I ended up going to these training events for arbitrators and meetings of arbitration lawyers and listening to how people talked about this case and starting to notice the extreme difference between how some Bangladeshi lawyers talked about it and some international lawyers sent there to train Bangladeshi lawyers how to be more friendly to international business.

We were talking about it and then I really became interested when I was doing some follow-up research back in the UK and I went to this training workshop for UK investors to learn how to use bilateral investment treaties and investor state dispute settlement to sort of get the most out of their investments.

And the trainer, who was from one of the Magic Circle law firms in London, gave an example of a really creative way that you could use international law in a way you wouldn't expect to make sure you recoup your investment, even if everything goes wrong.

He used the same example that I'd seen described as this kind of massively egregious overreach, overruling the Bangladeshi courts and undermining their sovereignty by a sort of distinguished lawyer in Dhaka.