What a few months it has been! I am not talking about erupting volcanoes and disrupted airline schedules, the General Election (although I see from Twitter that “Doing a Rochdale” is likely to rank highly in the litany of public gaffes alongside President Ford’s “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” and Gerald Ratner’s… Read More »
According to research carried out by me wholly unscientifically, I discovered that “to win the battle and lose the war” appears in a treatise entitled “The Art of War” written by military strategist Sun-Tzu in the 6th century BC. Sun-Tzu may not have been a real figure but his existence is given credibility by the… Read More »
What clients want is a fence at the top of the cliff rather than an ambulance at the bottom. Richard Susskind’s analogy, accompanied by the appropriate slide, the contents of which I will leave to your imagination, was one of a number of catchy themes he used to describe the changing world of legal services… Read More »
Slaughter & May hosted the latest meeting of the Commercial Litigators’ Forum on March 17th. The theme of the evening was “Litigating in the 21st Century” and there was a huge turn out. Perhaps this was not surprising as the speakers were Professor Richard Susskind OBE and Robert Graham-Campbell of Maitland Chambers. The aim of… Read More »
The model and author Sophie Dahl, probably most famous not for being Roald Dahl’s grand-daughter but for her traffic stopping billboard appearances in an Opium ad for Yves St Laurent, is about to star in her own television series starting on BBC 2 on March 23rd at 8.30pm. “The Delicious Miss Dahl” (and that is… Read More »
It happened to me again this morning! You will all be familiar with the scenario. You wait in the cold for many minutes for the one bus which will take you to your destination and having got thoroughly miserable and frustrated, not one but two buses turn up together. It seems like that in the… Read More »
The judgment in Gavin Goodale & Others v The Ministry of Justice & Others was delivered by the Senior Master, Master Whitaker, in November last year and is now available on BAILII [http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/B41.html] Master Whitaker is well known as an advocate of proportionate e-disclosure in appropriate cases and also as a judge experienced in dealing… Read More »
Many readers (and we have had a dramatic increase since the start of the year) will recall that my modest hope for 2010 was that there would be more strategic thought during the litigation process than is often apparent when we are called in to assist. Frankly, not a lot of strategic thought can be… Read More »
A recent US case of a law firm suing a client contains a salutary lesson. Debevoise & Plimpton had sued former client Candlewood for $6million in unpaid legal fees and found itself facing “an answer and counterclaim” seeking damages of $55million! [Ex-Debevoise Client Raises Nasty Counterclaims in Unpaid Bills Case, The American Lawyer, 14 January,… Read More »
Two matters caught my eye last weekend which I would like to share with readers of this blog. The first was the announcement that former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on January 29th 2010. In particular, the former PM will face questions about his government’s use of intelligence which… Read More »