Steve’s back in town

Go back a decade and Townleys was the go-to firm for anything new and exciting in sports law. Steve Townley, the founder, was the hottest of hotshot sports lawyers — a dealmaker with a pack of calling cards connecting him to sporting bodies, media moguls, clubs and players across the globe. Plus he lived in edgy Hoxton long before it was the cool place to be.

But time moves on. Townleys merged with Hammonds and Townley gravitated to the Far East to advise governments and governing bodies on their sports strategies.

Now he is back in London, keenly focused on resuming where he left off but taking it on to a new level. “I still have my practising certificate as a solicitor,” he told me this week, “but I’m now also a qualified mediator. So what I’m doing is acting as a dealmaker and a mediator bringing organisations together through a process of finding common ground.”

With London moving towards becoming the world’s sporting capital in 2012 I expect to see a podium finish from Townley before that Olympic flame is extinguished.

Blessed mediators

You have a dispute. So are lawyers the solution? Or are they the problem? That was one of the issues that surfaced at last week’s Chartered Institute of Arbitrators’ annual mediation symposium, entitled From Small Acorns, where the guest speaker was Lord Woolf.

Given that the event was generously hosted by CMS Cameron McKenna you might have thought that the arbitrators would have been grateful for their largesse. But the prevailing view was that lawyers just make things worse. Bring them in as a last resort only when everything else has failed, one mediator said. Meanwhile, outside in the real world, litigation is booming.

Top Shot

The suave Sandy Nairn, director of the National Portrait Gallery, is a hard act to follow as a public speaker but Tim Eyles, managing partner of Taylor Wessing, did it with aplomb on Tuesday evening when he announced the winner of this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize.

A packed central hall at the NPG was treated to blown-up images of the shortlisted entries while Eyles presented himself as the cultured face of City lawyering by deftly weaving together the award’s hallmarks — artistic, international, excellence and social engagement — with those of the firm. Taylor Wessing was already basking in Nairn’s commendation for its “fantastic” support for the NPG over the past five years but the applause that the firm received from a predominantly arty audience suggested that in these hard times sustained corporate patronage is warmly appreciated.

The firm’s Michael Frawley, whose mother was a photographer, took part in the selection process that singled out Rosie Bancroft by Paul Floyd Blake as the winner.

edward.fennell@yahoo.co.uk

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