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12 October 2012 / Clive Howard , Julian Roskill
Issue: 7533 / Categories: Features , Legal services , Profession
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A whole new world

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What do ABSs mean for individual partners, ask Clive Howard & Julian Roskill

If you had joined a partnership some 30 years ago, you might have expected to spend your entire professional career at the same firm. You would have worked hard and had a fair degree of autonomy to develop your practice area. You competed with your professional colleagues in other law firms. Management tended to play a supporting role, allowing you to focus on your legal skills.

There are several reasons why this is no longer true today, notably:

  • the deregulation of the financial services marketplace, which created major financial institutions and then large professional legal and accountancy firms with broader offerings to clients;
  • the relaxing of advertising rules, which changed how law firms saw and competed against each other;
  • the arrival, mainly in London, of foreign law firms; and
  • the emphasis on the profitability of individual practice areas.

The result? Partners in some firms found themselves working in more modern, competitive businesses, managed centrally in

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