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• An AI time machine

• LittleLaw x Magic Circle

• Get law firms to headhunt you

• You NEVER want to be called “et al.”

• Get the most from your annual leave

• Are Apple and Google becoming pals?

• A ‘dude-inspired’ attack on Companies House

… and more!

EDITOR’S RAMBLE 🗣

I’ve been excited to share this…

Our little newsletter is teaming up with a Magic Circle law firm

Sayed, Early Careers Specialist at Freshfields, will be joining us to give you the ACTUAL answers on... well... anything to do with law firm applications.

If you’ve got questions like:

• 🤔 What skills are law firms actually looking for?

• 🤔 What are the most common mistakes applicants make?

• 🤔 What do firms really mean by ‘commercial awareness’?

… or anything else, reply to this email to let me know.

This is gonna be awesome!

- Idin

FEATURED REPORT 📰

💰 Private equity struggles to sell

What's going on here?

Private equity (PE) firms were left holding a record number of unsold assets at the end of last year.

What's private equity?

Put simply, this is how PE works:

1. First, PE firms gather money, often supplemented by borrowing

2. Next, they use that money to acquire a business

3. After that, they “enhance the business’ value” by making changes like cutting unnecessary costs or improving its leadership

4. And within five years of buying it, they try to sell the company at a higher price

But that final stage hasn’t been so easy, recently.

Rising interest rates have increased the cost of borrowing money, so anyone looking to raise money to buy businesses is holding off right now.

That’s impacting private equity firms' ability to find buyers — so they’re left holding a growing backlog of unsold companies.

How big of an issue is this?

According to the consultancy company Bain, there's a backlog of 28,000 companies, together valued at over $3 trillion (yes… trillion), still held by private equity firms worldwide.

PE firms aim to sell these companies within three to five years. But now, over 40% of these unsold entities are hitting the four-year mark.

Are things going to change any time soon?

While interest rates remain high, things will probably stay like this — and there’s no sign of interest rates changing.

This week, we’re going to get rate decisions from the US Federal Reserve (on Wednesday) and the Bank of England on Thursday.

Both are expected to leave the high interest rates as they are.

Why should private equity firms care?

Once these firms make a sale of a company, they’ll give a proportion of that money to their investors.

If they’re not selling any companies, their investors will get a nervous about getting a return on their money!

Buying time: As PE firms are put under pressure to generate some funds, some have resorted to borrowing money to bridge the gap.

It’s an unsustainable solution because:

1. the companies they hold were bought with debt,

2. and then they’re using these debt-filled companies as security to borrow more money.

It’s a bit like buying your house with a mortgage and borrowing against the value of the house even though there’s already borrowing on it. 😬

IPOs instead of sales: Another options for PE firms to cash out is to take the companies public instead of trying to sell them. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) route is starting to heat up again — European companies raised over £2bn in IPOs since January, more than double the amount from the same time last year. So we’ll probably see more PE-owned businesses go down this route to turn their assets into cash.

Why should law firms care?

Corporate law firms make more money when there are deals taking place — and PE transactions are a major source of revenue for them.

Since interest rates started rising in 2022, there’s been a slump in deals. And news stories like this one — about struggling PE firms — aren’t a good sign.

High interest rates → expensive acquisitions → fewer deals → less money for law firms.

Although we’re in a bad transactions market, some law firms are still betting on PE coming back strong.

Miko Bradford, from the recruitment company Bluepeak said: “You are seeing firms invest in private equity… with a particular focus on the top end. Firms know that those private capital providers are amongst the most innovative, doing the biggest, most complicated, sophisticated transactions that continue irrespective of market conditions.”

And if you’ve looked at the legal press, you’ll have seen this in the recent PE hiring frenzy (mostly from US law firms) — these are just some of the headlines from the last couple of months! 👇

Law firms are hiring (very expensive) PE partners because in private equity ”client relationships are very personal and so clients are very likely to follow the partner”, according to Siobhán Lewington, from the recruitment company Fox Rodney.

So, despite all the news being bad and interest rates being unlikely to change, some firms are looking to get a head start on PE deals when they return.

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👇️  Imagine if one of these law firms were headhunting you!

Well, that can happen if you sign up for Vantage.

Vantage is FREE online portal that lets top law firms connect with you.

Those firms can headhunt you and offer you opportunities with them — think: insight days, events and even training contracts and pupillage.

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A BIT OF FUN 😄

they did you dirty on the group project 🤡

IN OTHER NEWS 🗞

• 🍏 Apple looks to integrate Google's Gemini AI into upcoming iPhones. The collaboration would let iPhones benefit from Google’s powerful AI capabilities. But as the two Big Tech companies look to work together, it’ll make the competition watchdogs a bit nervous (the two are still being investigated for their search engine deal).

• 🇬🇧 A UK judge has ruled that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto — the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Despite Wright's persistent assertions and the tech world's rapt attention, he failed to give conclusive proof. Wright, of course, also didn’t have the key to Satoshi’s Bitcoin wallet which contains 1.1m Bitcoins — £50bn. So, the mystery remains: Who really is Satoshi Nakamoto?

• 📡 Vodafone's selling its Italian business to Swisscom in a hefty €8 billion all-cash deal. This strategic move is part of Vodafone's plan to reshape its presence in Europe, focusing on more profitable ventures. Slaughter & May and Travers Smith are advising on the sale.

• 🛒 Tesco's in for a logo makeover after losing a legal battle to Lidl over its Clubcard Prices logo's resemblance to Lidl’s logo. Tesco has to ditch the yellow-on-blue design. Lidl argued it was too similar to theirs. The Court of Appeal sided with Lidl, marking a win for brand identity protection. We covered this last year if you want to read that.

• 🤖 KPMG is planning to invest heavily in artificial intelligence, with the aim of outshining traditional law firms. Leveraging its partnership with Microsoft plus its substantial capital, KPMG plans to inject "tens of millions of dollars" into AI tools designed to optimise corporate legal work. With over £28bn in gross revenue, KPMG's scale dwarfs that of even the largest law firms, positioning it in a unique way to lead in technological innovation within the legal sector.

• 🏢 Companies House is becoming more powerful than ever to toughen the UK’s stance against shady company activities. Companies House is where UK companies are centrally registered. Following the new Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, there will now be stricter requirements for company formations —no more PO box addresses, and every company must have an accessible email for official communications. It’s definitely needed after a recent ‘Dudeist Priest’ attack (yes, you read that right) on Companies House caused a bunch of issues.

AROUND THE WEB 🌐

• 🌀 Cool: This AI time machine lets you travel back in time to any place.

• 🏖️ Useful: Get the best value holiday requiring the least amount of annual leave (UK only).

• 🗞️ News: Want global commercial awareness? Get the biggest news stories from around the world in a comprehensive, stylish newsletter.*

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STUFF THAT MIGHT HELP YOU 👌

• 📹️ Free application help: If you're applying to commercial law firms, check out my YouTube channel for actionable tips and an insight into the lifestyle of a commercial lawyer in London.