Wake Up Call: Pandemic ‘Shakeup’ Hits Corporate Legal Ties

In today’s column, Dentons said it added new firms in Nigeria and Iowa; Womble Bond Dickinson plans to slash its U.S. office space; Singapore sees returns on efforts to compete with Hong Kong as a dispute venue.

• Leading off, most corporate legal departments reduced their outside counsel relationships last year in the “biggest shakeup in the outside legal services market since the Great Recession,” according to Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions’ latest LegalView report. The report says 16% of attorney-client relationships that existed in 2019 were paused in 2020, with the last 50 of the Am Law 200 most likely to ...