Talk:Linklaters

Magic Circle

I have created a stub article on Magic Circle (law). Very very basic but I hope users will expand it- source of the term, relevance or otherwise etc. Many thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.42.89.140 (talk • contribs)

Silent Karl

Curious this one - having worked at Linklaters for almost 10 years I've never heard this name before. Would be tempted to adjust the claim somewhat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.46.12 (talk • contribs)

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BetacommandBot 03:19, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Offices Section

As both User:TEB728 and I believe, all be it for different reasons, that this section should be removed, I have removed it again, and invite User:Rangoon11 to explain why he feels this Promotional section should be included in an encyclopaedia. Mtking (talk) 11:46, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the reasons are not really different--just the way they are expressed. The fact that the promotional list is not notable is demonstrated by the fact that it not given by an independent source; so we have only Linklaters' opinion that it is notable. —teb728 t c 12:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

You say 'The fact that the promotional list is not notable is demonstrated by the fact that it not given by an independent source; so we have only Linklaters' opinion that it is notable.' Firstly that is not WP policy, you seem to be confusing notability policy for whether a subject should have an article with whether information needs to be given in third party sources to be included in an article on a clearly notable subject. Secondly, the list of offices can be found in many third party sources e.g. [1] or [2] (note that the Law Society page may require entry of the firm name before the list can be shown). A list of offices is in no way promotional per se and appears in a huge number of WP articles for law firms. I have nothing against the removal of the flags however, per WP:FLAGS.

The stable, long standing version of this article contains the list of offices. It has now been removed through edit warring, not through a proper discussion on this page. It should be reinstated at once until this discussion has run its course and a consensus has been established for removal. The edit warring messages just placed on my talk page by TEB728 (User talk:Rangoon11#Edit warring) represent extremely disappointing behaviour by a long standing editor.Rangoon11 (talk) 12:39, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

The reason for my first message on your user talk page was that you had reverted the article three times in about 4 hours, and I wanted to be sure you knew you could be blocked for a fourth revert in 24 hours. (I didn't know at first you had already been warned because your prior 3RR warnings had been archived from the page history.) The reason for my second message was that your reply seemed to imply you thought WP:3RR did not apply to you. —teb728 t c 00:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I should add that list of offices also appear in various published guides to the legal market, such as Legal 500 Rangoon11 (talk) 13:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

(spotted at the WP:NPOV/N thread) Ugh, you need to find secondary sources with substantial discussion of the subject at hand. Not pages that list all and every office from a directory of law firms. Is there something particularly notable about any of the offices? Is any of them residing in a historic building, staying in one country due to convoluted political reasons, etc? If not, then a brief summary is enough. The sentence "Linklaters has 26 offices (etc)" is quite enough to summarize the offices of the subject, accompanied by a footnote that tells readers where to find the complete list.

(Don't get me started on how using a list with flags makes it look like a promotional brochure..... Also, check WP:ICONDECORATION) Sorry if I sound a bit bitter, it's not the first time I stumble upon huge amounts of flags that are used to prettify articles. ---Enric Naval (talk) 11:41, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a discussion on whether each office should have its own article, but whether a list of offices should be included in this article, as it is in most WP articles of law firms. Since the list of offices is wholly uncontentious and uncontroversial there is actually no reason in WP policy why Linklaters own website cannot be used to cite the list. Yes it is possible to find coverage of each individual office in the legal press, but that isn't necessary to include a plain list here according to WP policy. Removal of the list would be censorship, pure and simple, and would set a ludicrous precedent for the articles of other organisations. Rangoon11 (talk) 11:53, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

How on earth is it censorship ? There is a policy called WP:PROMOTION and listing the offices in the form of a list of cities (with or whithout flags) serves only to promote the organisation and its services, please remember that this is an encyclopaedia and not an extension of the organisations own marketing department. Mtking (talk) 12:02, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

It is censorship pure and simple, because it is removing factual, cited and relevant content about a topic, which helps readers to properly understand the subject of the article in question. And perhaps you should actually read WP:PROMOTION rather than just linking to it, there is nothing there which suggests that a factual list of a law firm (or any other organisation's) offices is promotional or inappropriate. Rangoon11 (talk) 12:08, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

It is not, just because material is deemed not appropriate for an encyclopaedia does not mean that it is being censored, a reader will be able to follow one of a number of links to the company website where that detailed information can be obtained. Mtking (talk) 02:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

It would be censored from Wikipedia, which is the only thing that this discussion pertains to.Rangoon11 (talk) 12:58, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

It may not be promotional... but I do think WP:NOTDIRECTORY applies. Blueboar (talk) 17:37, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Which part? Having just re-read it I can't see how. Rangoon11 (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Point 4 would seem to cover it along with point 8 Mtking (talk) 02:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Not by my reading. The offices of Linklaters are a fundamental part of its business. Describing the firm without giving information about its offices is as absurd as having details about a car manufacturer but not detailing its products. This is not a directory as contact information is not being given.

Point 8 states 'A complete exposition of all possible details. Rather, an article is a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject.' The office locations are accepted knowledge, and are fundamental to understanding the firm. I am really puzzled as to why some editors are so keen to remove the long standing office information, but have said nothing about the list of key practice areas. In my view the office locations are as fundamental to the firm and to readers understanding it.Rangoon11 (talk) 12:50, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

The practice areas a firm works in is key to understanding what the business does, having an office in Tokyo and not Yokohama or New York but not LA does not go to the fundamental nature of the business. This is starting to take on the look of a filibuster. Mtking (talk) 14:19, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

Here is my proposal on this :

Offices
Re-add an Offices section with the following text :

Linklaters has its headquarters in London and has offices in another 25 cities in 19 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America.

Awards

• Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
• Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

I have been unable to find any coverage of these awards outside Legal Business Online (the organisation awarding them) and Media Releases of firms wining them, nothing independent, so given this is a sector that hands out awards like confetti so in the end everyone has something then the section should be removed pending the sourcing in third party coverage.

Mtking (talk) 02:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem with that is that it doesn't include the very long standing list of offices. I would be happy with the offices to be presented in prose format, sans flags, as follows, and I feel that this is a fair compromise:

Offices

Linklaters currently has 26 offices in 19 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America. Its headquarters and largest office is in London, and it has other European offices in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Brussels, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Lisbon, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw. In the Americas the firm currently has offices in New York and São Paulo. In Asia and the Middle East the firm currently has offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo.

Rangoon11 (talk) 12:50, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

No, as per above discussion WP:NOT et al, this has not addressed the issues raised above. The length of time it has been wrong does not make it right. As I said on your talk page, if there are non-primary sources discussing Linklaters's office locations (rather than just listing them like an international white pages) and what is special or noteworthy about the locations chosen for offices then it would be appropriate to report on that. 14:05, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Vast numbers of WP articles of other law firms and professional services firms (let alone other commercial organisations per se) list the office locations of those organisations, unless the number is impractically large, as with something like PwC - under 30 offices is clearly not in that category. If your argument is that only special or noteworthy details about a commercial organisation can be included in their article, then 99% of the content of all WP articles of commercial organisations should be deleted. But then, of course, that is not actually WP policy and is just a specious argument to justify the removal of long standing, factual, cited and appropriate content from this article.

Examples of WP article of law firms where offices are listed - and have been listed for a long time - include (and this is a very truncated list): Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, Chadbourne & Parke, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Coudert Brothers, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Dewey & LeBoeuf, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Proskauer Rose, Shearman & Sterling, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, Allen & Overy, Eversheds and CMS Cameron McKenna, Baker & McKenzie, Jones Day, Greenberg Traurig, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Reed Smith, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Loyens & Loeff. Rangoon11 (talk) 15:08, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I find that prose-form listing, even primary-sourced, to be appropriate and non-promotional. What is the issue here, WP:SPS, WP:NOT, or WP:WEIGHT? For SPS, businesses are experts on their own operations and appropriate as a source for their own information. For NOT, a list of offices a company owns is not quite an index (a list of all of those offices janitors, maybe)--for a law office, where the offices are makes a huge difference. For WEIGHT, we don't have secondary sourcing on these offices (yet), but what is the concern, that the offices are not really there or that we're giving them too much attention? 1 short paragraph of clearly relevant information to the company with 26 linked entries is right at the cusp, but I think the most recent proposal by Rangoon11 is a decent compromise and not far from workable at all. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:35, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

@Rangoon11. Well, feel free to go to those articles and replace the lists of offices with summaries of how many offices it has on each country/continent, as adequate. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:33, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• My opinion was asked. My opinion is that such content is not usually sufficiently encyclopedic, either in list form or as a block of text. When I find it in articles--usually because the article have been listed for deletion as promotional--I make them less promotional by removing it. But sometimes it can be worked into the historical narrative to show the development of the firm, development of the firm, "By 19xx, they had expanded into X city; by 20xx, into Y and Z." (with 3rd party references). I do not see how it is unimportant as part of a firms history. (When the list is very long, I'll abbreviate: "by 201x, they had grown into a network of 45 branches."

In addition sometimes a particular office has has a role sufficient to justify making an article section for it, with reference to activities it has specifically been engaged in. DGG ( talk ) 20:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Mtking (talk) 21:37, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

User talk discussion

moved from Rangoon 11's talk page by Ocaasi

Initial thoughts:

• Don't edit war. Get consensus either way and bring in more editors if necessary (me!)
• Promotional lists are a concern. WP:CORPORATE, WP:SPAM, WP:PROMOTION and WP:COI are under constant attack from marketing departments
• Businesses' websites are reliable primary sources for WP:Verification, however not for WP:WEIGHT. We can trust that information is accurate but not that it is worthy of inclusion.
• Summary style should be used where possible, mentioning the main offices or awards.
• Lists should be avoided if possible, as Wikipedia is not a directory or index.
• Context matters; in this case, readers can access the company's full website through an external link. The article is for encyclopedic content only.
• Major offices and awards are encyclopedic, minor offices and awards can be left for the reader at the linked website. In general, these can be done not in a list, and without flag graphics.
• Definitely keep this: Linklaters has 26 offices in 19 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America: I'm on the fence about listing the individual offices. 26 is a lot and in my view may be too many for an encyclopedia. I definitely would not use flags. Instead, maybe just describe some of their growth history (they started here, expanded here, and are opening new offices here...)
• Add award information not in a list but a paragraph. And only include awards which have been mentioned in independent secondary sources.

That's my first crack at it. Let me know what you think and I'll move it to the page. Note, I haven't read the specifics of the dispute yet. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:12, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for such a super quick response! I know that the flags were a problem and am happy for them to go. Re the awards I am fairly neutral although if they can be cited and are presented in a very neutral manner I don't think that they are inherently promotional or inappropriate.

To be honest my main concern, and the reason I have sought new input, is the list of offices. I think that it would set a very poor precedent if it were decided that it went against policy for the office locations (city and country only) to be included (my own reading of applicable policy is that it is quite acceptable content). If this information can't be included, then potentially a vast amount of articles of other commercial organisations are affected, and information that in my view is useful in helping readers to understand the subjects of the articles in question, and is purely factual, will be up for removal. Rangoon11 (talk) 19:22, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I should just add that I am happy for the details of locations to go in prose rather than list format, the key point for me is whether the information itself is appropriate or inherently promotional or directory-style. Rangoon11 (talk) 19:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Rangoon, I am not opposed to details of locations per se, if there is non-primary sourced information about offices then that would be fine in prose format. Mtking (talk) 10:09, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Primary sources are okay for information like this, as sources of information about themselves even with attribution (Linklaters lists its offices in...); although for a long list, it would be more appropriately to summarize the offices in prose. That said, 26 is just about the cusp, and it might be possible to list them all in 2-3 organized sentences about regions. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

References

"Notable work"

I have just removed this section in its entirety. It may be appropriate for a marketing glossy, but not for a Wikipedia article.--ukexpat (talk) 16:51, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

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