Norton Rose

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Norton Rose

Headquarters	London
No. of Offices	20
No. of Attorneys	1000+
Major Practice Areas	General practice
Revenue	NA
Date Founded	early 1800s
Company Type	LLP
Website	www.nortonrose.com

Norton Rose Group is a leading international law firm with its head office in London. It offers business law services from 20 offices across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. With around 1000 lawyers, its practice specialises in five key areas corporate finance, financial institutions, energy and infrastructure, transportand technology. The Group comprises Norton Rose LLP and its affiliates.

During the spring of 2007, the practice moved its headquarters from the City of London to a new development at More London on London's South Bank.

1 History
2 Present day
3 Awards
4 Global locations
5 External links
6 References

[edit] History

In 2007, the practice reorganised itself from a partnership to an LLP structure. However, its history dates back some 200 years.

[edit] Bishopsgate office

The practice's Bishopsgate office was badly damaged in the Provisional IRA's truck bomb of April 24, 1993, which killed journalist Ed Henty and injured more than 40 people. Following a lengthy refit, they reoccupied the offices and revamped its disaster recovery plans.^[1]

[edit] The Norton Rose M5 Group

The M5 Group was an alliance of five regional law firms formed in 1977. The original firms were Addleshaw Sons & Latham of Manchester, Booth & Co (Leeds), Bond Pearce (Plymouth, Southampton and Exeter), Mills & Reeve (Norwich and Cambridge) and Burges Salmon (Bristol). Addleshaw Sons & Latham merged with Booth & Co in 1997 to create Addleshaw Booth & Co.^[2]

Norton Rose joined the group in 1990 (upon which it was renamed The Norton Rose M5 Group), which shared training and precedent legal documents but otherwise operated very loosely as an alliance. The group decided against merging and, following one of its three-yearly reviews, the alliance's board opted to disband the alliance in August 1999 in order that the member firms could pursue their own expansion strategies.

[edit] International Expansion

Since the alliance was disbanded, the firm accelerated its international growth, opening offices through organic growth or acquisitions for example in Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, China, Dubai and Riyadh.

[edit] US Law Capabilities

In 1999, New York Magazine reported that Norton Rose was in deep merger negotiations with New York-based international specialty firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle.^[3] It appears that these talks never reached fruition. In 1998, the firm admitted its first two US-qualified partners who arrived from New York white shoe firm Davis Polk & Wardwell and has since made another partner-level hire from Latham & Watkins in 2007. The US corporate finance group has two partners in Norton Rose's London base and one in Hong Kong. However, the US team has suffered from high attrition rates. One US-qualified partner departed for Dorsey & Whitney in 2004 and 2006 saw 60% of its US-qualified associates resign.^[4] The US team remains small and peripheral to the firm's practice.^[5]

[edit] Present day

The Group has offices in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In 2006, it was the 74th largest legal practice in the world by revenue.^[6] It is particularly renowned for its expertise in complex transactions involving financing of "big ticket" assets (aircraft, ships and railcar fleets), large construction and infrastructure projects (toll roads, power generation stations, hospitals and public private partnership projects) and international mergers and acquisitions.

Bradley Chait worked at Norton Rose.

[edit] Awards

In 2007 Norton Rose was voted top law firm for Kyoto Project Credits by Environmental Finance magazine. Winner of Best Islamic Finance Law Firm at the The Islamic Business & Finance Awards 2007. Norton Rose LLP came highly commended in the client service category and came both highly commended and commended in the billing and fees category of the Financial Times - Innovative Lawyers Awards 2007 In that year, the firm also received the equity team of the year award from the Financial News.