Top dolour

Americans aren’t just taking over our football clubs, they are moving in on our professional academic institutions as well. Until recently the Professional Services Management Centre at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, was generously sponsored by Clifford Chance. That deal has ended (maybe for obvious reasons?). Instead, the funding is now coming from Novak Druce, a Texan IP niche firm run by Gregory Novak, a Saïd MBA alumnus. So it is now the Novak Druce Centre for Professional Service Firms.

Nothing against US law firms but this is a bit humiliating. Surely the true-Brit — and still mega-successful — firms such as Slaughter and May or Freshfields could have been persuaded to dig a little into their coffers for this great institution?

Fired up

What was the best thing to happen at the Mackrell International meeting at the Hilton Glasgow Hotel last weekend? With 80 delegates from 29 international law firms the high point could have been the talk by Neil Stevenson, of the Law Society of Scotland, on the future of the profession. More likely, though, it was the midnight fire alarm that brought on to the streets not just the lawyers and their partners but — in a merry riot — the whole of the Celtic football team and Billy Connolly who were also at the hotel. The foreign guests questioned whether every night was like this in Glasgow.

Brothers in law

You will recall the controversy when Alan Milburn’s report on access to the professions suggested that the law was a stitch-up by people who liked to keep it all in the family. Well, looking at the clinical negligence field I see what he means. It seems that old rivals and top clinical negligence experts Bertie Leigh, of Hempsons, and Russell Levy, of Leigh Day & Co, are burying the hatchet to sit alongside each other on the board of the Clinical Disputes Forum. But it turns out that this rivalry is all pretty incestuous. The CDF was founded by Sarah Leigh, Bertie’s sister, who also happened to be Russell’s senior partner. Reports of the demise of the family practice are clearly premature.

Lost in translation

Now that the Supreme Court is about to join EastEnders on the box, will the great British public understand a word that the justices say? Is it time, in fact, for the language of English law to undergo fundamental reform?

That is the topic anyway for next Tuesday evening’s debate hosted by Taylor Wessing for the English Project (of which I was a founder trustee) in association with The Times and the City Law School. The broadcasters Shaun Ley (of The World This Weekend on Radio 4) and Anne Atkins will be battling it out with the radical district judge Stephen Gerlis and Richard Gordon, the distinguished QC. Tickets are available free from today by e-mailing events@taylorwessing.com.

edward.fennell@yahoo.co.uk

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