* Still giving off warm, fuzzy vibes after the release of its groundbreaking
Corporate Social Responsibility report at a glittering press gathering a few
weeks ago, Freshfields is now backing Shelter in its efforts to end
child homelessness. On Thursday night, new London managing partner Tim
Jones will jointly launch the Children’s Legal Service, which will
provide legal representation to more than 800 homeless children over the
next three years, with one full-time and one part-time solicitor dedicated
to the project. The Water Cooler is desperately searching for something
snide and cynical to say about this, but, dammit, we can’t think of
anything. Visit www.keystothefuture.org.uk
for more information.
* A new legal recruitment website, Law
And More, launched this week, claiming to be the UK’s most
comprehensive. Hats off, good luck and all that: it doesn’t look too shabby
at first glance — a few technical teething troubles, to which the Water
Cooler can relate — though there’s something weirdly familiar
about their guide
to securing a training contract.
* Comparative advertising — whereby one company explains how rubbish its
rivals products are — is more common in the mobile phone, car and high
street banking businesses than the rarefied world of law. But at least one
firm has got in on the act with a warning about cheap conveyancing. MTA
Solicitors, based in Manchester and Bromley, told us this week that “cut
price conveyancing is not all it’s cracked up to be”. The firm, which
happens to have a conveyancing practice, is “concerned” that consumers are
being sucked in by rivals offering cheaper fees but poorer service. Funny
that.
* Where now for Rudy Giuliani after dropping out of the US presidential
race? Apparently he is set to roll up his sleeves and get stuck back in to
the rather lower-profile world of corporate law as a partner at Bracewell &
Giuliani, the firm he co-founded before entering politics. "Rudy is
a lawyer and a damn fine lawyer. He thinks like a lawyer and he likes being
around lawyers," his soon to be managing partner said.
* Much discussion recently around social networking etiquette and the law,
including vexed questions like whether “poking” a colleague on Facebook
during office hours from a work computer counts as sexual harassment. A
judge in the US, meanwhile, was asked to tackle the issue from a slightly
different angle: does asking someone to be your friend on MySpace break the
terms of a no-contact protection order? The New York judge said it can
because “while it is true that the person who received the 'friend request'
could simply deny the request to become 'friends', that request was still a
contact”. The Water Cooler is in trouble, then.
* An interesting take on Valentine's Day from a US radio station that teamed
up with a local lawyer to offer one lucky listener the chance of winning a
free divorce. WKLC FM, in West Virginia, reminds us there is a “darker side”
to February 14. Asked to explain the somewhat unusual prize, the station’s
boss said: "Sure we can give away concert tickets, and we do. That's
going to make you happy for a little while. This is the chance to make
someone happy for the rest of their life."
* One unexpected beneficiary of the divorce battle between Sir Paul
McCartney and Heather Mills is David Rosen. An almost
unknown high street solicitor, Rosen has been suddenly thrust to prominence
as part of Mills’s entourage, facing McCartney’s dream team of Nicholas
Mostyn, QC, and solicitor Fiona Shackleton. A litigator, Rosen, of the
Edgware firm Darlingtons, is a solicitor-advocate but as Mills is acting for
herself he can only advise from the sidelines as a McKenzie friend. How he
came to be in the case is a mystery — other than that it was through another
solicitor. Not Mishcons, we can take it — which is still waiting for its
£1.5 million fees to be paid after parting company with Mills.
* Also cleverly piggy-backing on the publicity is the Personal Support Unit in
the Royal Courts of Justice. Judith March, the director, says:
“Heather could have come to us. Most of our clients don’t get the same
publicity but have just as daunting opposition. “The unit is a small charity
that helps unrepresented litigants in the RCJ and also at the Principal
Registry of the Family Division in Holborn, at Wandsworth County Court and
at the newly opened Manchester Civil Justice Centre [where they need
volunteers}.” The volunteers accompany people to court, help them with
forms, etc (www.thepsu.co.uk or 020-7947 7701).
* More women lawyers are turning to alcohol over stress. The charity LawCare,
reports the Law Society Gazette, says that women lawyers are making as many drink-related
calls to its helpline as men. Men, historically, made two thirds of the
calls but 50 per cent are now from women.
* For someone who never gives interviews, Sir Paul McCartney's lawyer Fiona
Shackleton secured a mass of good coverage over the weekend as a prelude
to the ending of her client's divorce hearing last Monday. Miss Shackleton
only stayed for a short while for the last morning while Ms Mills rehearsed
her final arguments before Mr Justice Bennett. By coincidence both
she and Nicholas Mostyn, QC, are engaged together again - on another
case that is about to start.
* Debevoise & Plimpton LLP must have been hoping for some publicity
last week after scooping US Law Firm of the Year at the Legal Business
Awards 2008 ceremony in London last week - where the magazine described it
as “among the boldest and most forward thinking of global players”. But it
did not bargain for featuring quite so heavily as the offices of the former
Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, QC. It was there that Badri
Patarkatsishivili, the Russian oligarch found dead in his Surrey home,
had only hours before met with Goldsmith and others for a meeting that took
several hours.
* Religion and law are an incendiary mix at the moment. But, not to be put
off, the London School of Economics is launching a public debate
on religion - to be debated by a bishop, rabbi and law professor. The
panel discussion, Life and Death, takes place this Thursday. The
speakers are: the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries, Rabbi Levin, of
South Hampstead synagogue, and Emily Jackson, LSE law and ethics professor.
Lord Justice Rix gives a legal perspective. Details: 020-7107 5025
* A happy postscript to the week in court for the McCartneys for one Beatle
fan. The fan who gave his name only as "Joe from Leytonstone"
had taken the day off as holiday from his work with a taxi firm to try to
get Sir Paul's autograph on one of his battered collection of albums.
Presented just outside court with the White Album, Sir Paul initially
declined - as widely reported. But Water Cooler can exclusively reveal that
outside the court precincts in the lunchbreak, Joe, 50, got his signature. A
source close to Sir Paul said: "It was worth it to see his face."
