The result, he feels, is that this will open up the market greatly for English firms. But that may take years. Until European pension funds and other investors become as sophisticated as US and UK bond investors, the mass American market makes 144a expertise desirable. However, with US securities lawyers notoriously difficult to recruit, there are still some things UK law firms can do to improve the all-round capability of their teams. Firstly, consider merging teams internally, and getting rid of narrow specialisations.
Clients are tired of being dragged round from department to department.
Clifford Chance is trying to address these concerns, by knitting its project finance and capital markets teams together. We are trying to spread the skill base,' he says. You cannot cram all of this information into one individual lawyer. The markets themselves are just too deep to concentrate all that knowledge in any one person. To give the client the best service, you need to have specialists in one area.