Introduction
Welcome to our Annual Knowledge Report for 2025. This is the tenth edition of this report, which looks at the year’s key legal developments and those on the horizon. The Report has again been produced as a digital publication, which we hope will optimise the user experience.
This year’s Report contains insight pieces from our Practice Development lawyers covering a broad range of legal topics, including asset management and investment funds, data protection, finance, financial regulation, corporate, ESG, employment, disputes and investigations, planning and environmental, and real estate.
Each chapter of the Report is laid out in easy-to-read sections and accompanied by a useful synopsis of the year ‘at a glance’ and what to expect ‘looking ahead’ to 2026.
This year's Report also features an article written by Dr Vincent Power, partner in the firm’s EU, Competition & Procurement Group, in which he examines key decisions of the EU Court.
Our sense is that 2025 has been a quieter year than previous years, at least in the context of the scale of domestic and EU legislation. It has nonetheless been a busy year, with some important developments and, as you might expect, there are some overarching themes, including:
- a continuing spotlight on governance from a range of sources
- reform being front and centre of developments in litigation
- ongoing change in employment law
Paula Reid, Partner Knowledge & Practice Development
KNOWLEDGE RESET
I’d like to take this opportunity to mention that our knowledge function has undergone a reset this year. Part of this reset involved a change in name. Our knowledge group is now called the Knowledge & Practice Development Group, and our knowledge lawyers are now Practice Development Lawyers. This change is about recognising the role that Knowledge plays in driving ALG’s legal expertise and practice innovation, and enhancing the skills of ALG lawyers as subject matter experts in the marketplace. It is also about positioning our lawyers even more closely within the practice groups in which they work. This position equips them to better understand the knowledge needs, gaps and potential pain points of our clients and, from that informed position, to continue to innovate and provide an enhanced knowledge offering to our clients.
The second part of this reset concerned a firm wide knowledge policy, which elevates current best practice in knowledge behaviours to standards which all ALG lawyers are expected to apply in their day-to-day work practices. From our clients’ perspective, this is about enhancing our culture of collaboration and partnership across practices and disciplines through shared knowledge and understanding, which can only have positive impacts on our client services.
CLIENT KNOWLEDGE OFFERING
ON BOARD
Last year, we launched a podcast series, the Directors’ Cut, within On Board. On Board is our repository of corporate governance intel and guidance for company directors and their legal advisors. The first four episodes of the Directors' Cut looked at governance from the perspective of the independent non-executive director.
This year, we have extended the conversations to cover the related topic of leadership. The first episode of this tranche features David Widger, Managing Partner of ALG, who shares his thoughts about leadership and his own experience of leadership within ALG, in a career that spans just over three decades from trainee to his current role as MP.
ONLINE KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING
KnowledgePlus is our online knowledge and e-learning extranet for ALG clients. It will provide you with thought leadership, expert opinion and spotlight coverage of key areas of significant impact for your legal team and business. It also features case studies of how our team has worked with client legal teams to develop bespoke knowledge management solutions. Access is available exclusively to ALG clients. To register for KnowledgePlus, please email your details to knowledge@algoodbody.com.
We encourage our clients to engage with our team and to make use of our knowledge offerings, which can be reviewed in detail under the Client Knowledge Services section of this Report.