Corporate Legal Update

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Corporate Legal Update

In early December we announced the conversion of the UK partnership of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw to an English limited liability partnership. Our firm is the largest legal practice in the UK to have taken advantage of the recent legislation which firstpermitted the establishment of LLPs in April 2001. At the time of the combination of Rowe &Maw and Mayer, Brown & Platt in February 2002, the firm set itself the deadline of achieving LLP status in the UK by November 2002. That we were able to meet this ambitious deadline is due in no small measure to the experience the firm has gained over the years through being at the forefront in the developments in this area of the law. We have advised many professional practices on the advantages of incorporation, including Ernst & Young LLP, the first limited liability partnership established under the new legislation. Turning to the field of company law, the past few months have been notable for a number of developments which will have a significant effect upon the legal terrain through which company directors must tread (and, it seems, tread carefully). For the most part, this issue of Corporate Legal Update is devoted to those developments and, in particular, to providing an overview of some of the principal corporate governance changes and proposals over the past few months which affect UK company directors. From this question of "best practice" for directors, we end this issue by examining what might constitute "best practice" in terms of a company's document management policies, an issue which has also received much attention of late due to certain high profile cases regarding the destruction of documents, both in the UK and overseas.

Turning to the field of company law, the past few months have been notable for a number of developments which will have a significant effect upon the legal terrain through which company directors must tread (and, it seems, tread carefully). For the most part, this issue of Corporate Legal Update is devoted to those developments and, in particular, to providing an overview of some of the principal corporate governance changes and proposals over the past...

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