Partnering with universities

Herbert Smith has strong relationships with a number of institutions and individuals concerned with law in the academic world. We also fund a number of academic chairs and university research positions.

Professor Eilis Ferran, Professor of Company and Securities Law at the University of Cambridge, and the first woman to be appointed as a professor in the law faculty at the University of Cambridge. She has been a consultant with the firm since 2003 and is a regular speaker in our internal education programme on corporate law and financial regulatory matters.

We also benefit from a number of other academics providing regular lectures at the firm. These include Professor Ewan McKendrick on contract law - Ewan is Pro-Vice Chancellor of University, Museums and Collections and Herbert Smith Professor in English Private Law at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall.

The firm is a Foundation Sponsor of the Law and Financial Markets Project at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The project carries out research into how law and regulation serve and interact with financial market activity. It aims to provide a framework for collaborative research between lawyers in the commercial world and those in academic institutions. Our sponsorship will support the project for the next three years.

Richard King, Head of Legal Knowledge, comments:
"We support excellence in the teaching of law across the country. This pays dividends in two ways. Firstly, we are investing in the next generation of skilled and talented legal minds. And secondly, those teaching the law in universities receive support to develop their research and innovations. Their ideas positively influence the development of the law, helping us in practice and therefore our clients."

A number of partners have held teaching positions in law faculties. Matthew Weiniger, a partner in the international arbitration practice, has recently taught on several LLM programmes at the University of London, and is a Visiting Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. Professor Hiroshi Oda is a consultant in Russian and Japanese law at the firm, and is the Sir Ernest Satow Professor of Japanese Law at the University of London (UCL).

Stephen Gale, a partner in the corporate recovery group, lectures widely on these matters. He serves as an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University College London’s department of law.