* Plenty of lawyers are obsessed with The Apprentice, but one 46-year-old property lawyer (named only as Janet) couldn't bear missing an episode while on holiday on the French Riviera, so she downloaded it on her laptop using a wireless Vodafone 3G card. Little did she realise her unlimited download tariff didn't apply abroad. The bill when she got home: £2,500 for that episode alone. Add to that another two shows and it came to a seriously painful £4,900. Try claiming that on expenses.

* David Bermingham, one of three former NatWest bankers doing time in the US for an Enron-related fraud, could have a new roommate. Bermingham is locked up at Lompoc, about 175 miles northwest of Los Angeles, where class action king Bill Lerach has just checked in.

* Sean Williams, executive director of the Office of Fair Trading, is leaving the competition regulator after less than a year in the post. He is the first senior departure since the awkward press release incident that ended with supermarket group Morrisons successfully suing for libel damages. The OFT say the two events are unconnected and that no one individual is to blame for the Morrisons affair. Williams, a former director of Ofcom and special adviser to the Prime Minister's policy unit, is said to be planning a move to the private sector.

* Last week, the Water Cooler was invited to take part in a panel discussion at the International Bar Association's leader's conference in Amsterdam. The topic: the public image of the legal profession. Having established at the outset that lawyers are about on a par with car salesmen and real estate agents in the public esteem (though, in fairness, probably still comfortably better regarded than journalists), the panel diligently set about discussing ways to rectify some of the more widely held complaints: inability to relate to or communicate with real people, overly expensive, obsessed with trivial detail. And then proceeded to spend the next three hours arguing about arcane technicalities that added nothing to the topic. Sigh.

* Hammonds is mourning the loss of its former senior partner and corporate rainmaker Richard Burns, who died this week after an unreported illness, aged only 49. Burns led the firm for four troubled years at the start of the decade, stepping down in 2005. The firm's managing partner, Peter Crossley, said: "We are devastated by Richard's sudden and tragic death. Richard was a great lawyer with huge intellect, vision and unwavering commitment to the firm."

* Last month, Frances Gibb highlighted the plight of community law centres that, because of the squeeze on legal aid, are struggling to continue providing frontline legal services for the needy. This week, some good news. This year's London Legal Support Trust walk raised £310,000 (a third more than last year) thanks to double the number of lawyers and law firms taking part in the ten kilometre stroll. Among the beneficiaries, the Mary Ward centre in Holborn got £27,000 and the Islington Law Centre £25,000. A great effort.

* This is old, but still worth flagging. In this dissenting opinion from the European Court of Human Rights, the splendidly named Judge Borrego Borrego delivers a withering attack on the sloppy reasoning of his fellow Strasbourg judges. Could we have found a Lord Denning for our time?

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