🧑⚖️ REGULATION

EU Crackdown

The European Union's Antitrust Chief, Margrethe Vestager, is celebrating two major victories this week.

In her first win, the European Court of Justice struck down a tax deal that Apple had with Ireland. And in the second, the court ruled against Google's anticompetitive practices.

"It was a win that made me cry because it is very important. …It's very important to show European taxpayers that once in a while tax justice can be done," Vestager said at a press conference in Brussels, reports Politico Europe.

The Apple case involved a tax arrangement the company had struck with Ireland in 2016, which Vestager argued gave the iPhone maker an unfair advantage over others. As Time notes, the Court ordered Ireland to reclaim roughly $14.4 billion in taxes (which accounts for about 2% of global Mac sales). The money has been sitting in an escrow account since the case began.

“We are disappointed with today’s decision as previously the general court reviewed the facts and categorically annulled this case,” a spokesperson for Apple said. CEO Tim Cook has also stated that the case is “total political crap.

Meanwhile, in the Google case, the European Court of Justice upheld a lower court's penalty against Google for antitrust violations. The 14-year-old case looked into whether Google favored its own online shopping links. The penalty totaled over $2.6 billion.

“She inherited a dead case, and she took a political chance based on whether it was worth it,” Christian Bergqvist, a law professor at the University of Copenhagen, told Politico. “There was a perception that you couldn’t do it, and she did it. …Europe was leading the way, at a time when U.S. antitrust agencies felt that they did not have sufficient political backing to go after Big Tech.”

US v Google

While the EU might have led antitrust investigations 14 years ago, today, the Justice Department is moving swiftly to investigate and try Big Tech.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that Google was in fact behaving as a monopoly in the search engine market. Now, the DOJ is going with state AGs on a new antitrust case against Alphabet: this one taking aim at it's ad business.

According to the AP, "the regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends."

Verdict

The political winds have changed since the late 2000s. Today, Silicon Valley is seen not only as economically dominant, but as a boogie man in both North America and Europe. As such, regulatory pressure has ramped up significantly against brand-name players like Apple, Alphabet, and the rest.

💼 INDUSTRY

Merger Fever

Law firm mergers are at a 20-year high. So says Kristin Stark, a principle at law firm consultancy Fairfax Associates. And it's clear to see why. Just this week, Womble Bond Dickinson (an AmLaw 100 firm) announced that it would combine with Lewis Roca (an AmLaw 200 firm) on January 1, 2025. The merger would create a 1,300-lawyer firm with about $750 million in revenue.

“Both of our firms recognize there’s a need to build scale, to have a deeper bench, in order to provide the type of legal services that our clients need, both in terms of skill set and also geographical reach,” Merrick Benn, chairman of Womble Bond Dickinson, told Bloomberg Law.

But they're not alone: Troutman Pepper and Locke Lord, as well as  Ballard Spahr and Lane Powell have also announced mergers.

So what's going on?

“Clients have been consolidating their outside counsel relationships largely in an effort to get volume discounts by giving more work to a smaller number of firms,” Jordan Abshire of Abshire Legal Search told Bloomberg. He added that firms are feeling pressure to reach clients in more places.

Performance

As Reuters notes, Big Law has had a banner year so far. "Revenue increased an average of 11.4% during the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period last year, driven by billing rate and demand growth," their reporting cites. "The top 50 highest-grossing U.S. firms had the strongest revenue growth at 13.8% in the first half of 2024, according to the survey results. The second 50 firms had 7% and the next 100 firms had 8.8% revenue growth. According to The American Lawyer trade publication, the top grossing U.S. law firm in 2023 was Kirkland & Ellis, with $7.2 billion in revenue."

Verdict

Big Law has definitely seen revenue growth this year, but firms who believe merging with another firm can help them catch up should be cautious of this strategy. Furthermore, clients are parsing out work to a smaller group of firms as well as relying more heavily on ALSPs.