* City types already facing losing their bonus or even their job are having to cope with another, unexpected side-effect of the credit crunch: divorcing has become harder. According to Anna Wagstaff, a family law partner at Gordon Dadds, there have been a number of cases involving City-types lately in which the divorce can't be finalised because the parties can't sell their biggest asset, their house. "Clients having gone through the heartbreak of divorce and having reached a financial settlement find that they still cannot move on because failure to sell the house means they can't implement their divorce agreement," Wagstaff says. Is there no end to their suffering?

* Cue a collective groan from marketing departments across the City already spending tens of thousands of pounds on award and directory submissions. Yes, another legal directory is launching. Rapoports, the brain child of Dr Yuri Rapoport, an Australian solicitor, claims it will allow consumers to search for individual lawyers based on their track records, such as by clients they've acted for or cases they've won. The Water Cooler forsees one potential problem: the service depends on individual lawyers posting information about themselves. Bound to be impartial and objective, then.

* Designer Katrina Kostic Samen is almost single-handedly revitalising workspaces at the City's leading law firms. After recently kitting out Allen & Overy, Norton Rose and Olswang, her latest makeover is Eversheds, which this week moved into its new custom-built offices at 1 Wood Street. Plush without being pretentious, with a retro Seventies theme, it boasts glorious views over the building site that used to be A&O's head office, toward St Paul's and the Tate Modern. Two things are notable: nobody, not even senior management, has an office (apparently one head of department has even agreed to hot-desk); and the firm has tried desperately hard to be environmentally conscious. Alas, so keen were they in the first few days to show off their runoff-absorbing, insulation-providing grass roof that the number of visitors threatened to damage it. Guests now have to content themselves with a tour of the meeting rooms and client lounges.

* Pinsent Masons has won an award for best law website at the Webbys, the so-called "Oscars of the internet", for its IT news site Out-Law.com.

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