Internet fight
US-based lawyers have been sharing what they really think of their London counterparts online, with responses ranging from the pointed to the outright cheeky. And the City lot have wasted no time hitting back.
One of the top comments, posted to the r/biglaw subreddit on Reddit, wasted little time getting to the point: “Cool accent makes them sound smarter than they are.”
Things did not get much more flattering from there. A recurring complaint concerned the London approach to working hours, with one poster apparently unfamiliar with our exclusive working hours data declaring “Idk they’re always sleeping or on vacation.” One London lawyer, rather than taking offence, appeared content to own the characterisation, describing their cohort as simply “less workaholic than Americans and often better trained / more professional.”
Another detailed post attempted a kind of transatlantic legal hierarchy, arguing that City lawyers do to New York lawyers what continental European lawyers do to London lawyers: “stuffy”, “academic rather than practical”, “overly cautious” and unable to “take a view on anything.” The same poster, however, handed London a significant win on drafting, describing UK documents as “much clearer than US drafting. Not even close.”
Elsewhere, a further US lawyer described their London counterparts as “socially coded to want to appear articulate and intelligent rather than efficient and direct”, reserving a specific dig for Oxford, Cambridge and LSE grads. They also claimed that London lawyers “have sex with other people in the office at a much higher rate than Americans.”
The opinions (and arguments) continued. “As a London lawyer that frequently works with our US offices, I find the US SPAs [Share Purchase Agreement]/documents just appalling,” another post read. A second, who had experience working at a US firm in London argued that US lawyers “quote heaps to prepare a lengthy memo that doesn’t really answer the question, take aaaaaages to respond (often after the deadline), very conservative in their views.”
On the question of pace, one poster was sceptical that US urgency actually gets deals done any faster:
“It turns out if you push to turn every piece of paper ASAP instead of having parties actually think about a workable solution before you pick up the pen, you waste a lot of time on back and forth and discarded work product. I see commercial issues in US deals that are still being negotiated the day of signing, that in other jurisdictions, parties would have agreed before the lawyers started on first drafts.”
The “Kind Regards” sign-off also came under fire, with one American poster arguing it was needlessly formal “when we’ve been working together for a very long time”, preferring simply “Best” or “Thanks”. A London contributor was having none of it: “The kind regards thing is perfectly normal? The idea that it’s anything but a friendly sign off is mind blowing to me.”
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