Silver sheen

It’s Oscars week so we can wallow in lashings of self-indulgent publicity. Whatever you’ve got, flaunt it.

And there has been a welter of cinema-related legal puffery in the past few days. Among these my personal award for Best Supporting Lawyer goes to Hakan Kousetta, a partner in Howard Kennedy’s media and entertainment department. OK, Mr Kousetta may not be involved in any Oscars movies but he was the legal brain behind two films nominated for the much more classy Baftas — Control and Scott Walker: 30 Century Man.

Admittedly neither picked up an award directly but Matt Greenhalgh, scriptwriter on the “critically acclaimed” debut film Control, won the Carl Foreman award. “Seeing those nominations amongst some of the biggest films of the year was reward enough,” said a critically acclaimed spokesman for Howard Kennedy.

The name game

As long as you’re not the Lawyer-without-a-Name you have the chance of the limelight in Oscars week because, according to in-house counsel at Warner Bros: “There is virtually no name in the US not used by a practising lawyer.” In other words, any film character is likely to have a name doppelgänger somewhere in the legal profession.

Step forward then the critically acclaimed Michael Clayton, a senior partner at Morgan Lewis. Sadly, George Clooney's psychodrama Michael Clayton is not a movie about the real-life Michael Clayton and the drama of running a global trademark and copyright practice. What a disappointment!

Cheapo publicity

In recent weeks I’ve reported several stories about gallant young lawyers with City law firms rowing the Atlantic naked for charity. But frankly why bother when you can get just as much PR from having your logo stamped on a sailing boat?

So full marks to Reed Smith that put a few euros into Paprec-Virbac 2, a 60ft yacht that has been victorious in the Barcelona World Race. “Our sponsorship provided us with brand exposure at a worldwide event,” the firm said. “It’s great to think that the Reed Smith logo has accomplished a world tour on the winning vessel.” I think it’s great, too.

D’you see what I see?

My advertising colleagues complain that I give too much space to law firms promoting their cheap attention-grabbing publicity stunts. After all, what have they ever done for us? Instead, I should focus on explaining the tremendous benefits that flow from placing ads in this premium part of the paper.

So, to launch our new weekly series — “How a Times LAW advert changed my life” — I can report verbatim and unprompted the following from Rachael Reynolds, at law firm Ogier in Grand Cayman. “A year ago I was eating my lunch with the Times Law supplement open on top of mounds of paper, gazing at the ads. This has led, a year later, to having a beautiful turquoise sea out of my office window (instead of Eastcheap). The work is certainly comparable to my Top 20 City firm and our weekends are incomparable. I would send you a photo of our view but it would be terribly gauche.”

Rachel’s photo will now appear on the cover of our special colour supp, Readers’ Jobs, featuring lucky lawyers whose dreams have come true thanks to a fantastic ad in these critically acclaimed pages.

edward.fennell@yahoo.co.uk

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