14 November 2011

1

Twitter.  Just the very name sounds stupid doesn’t it? 

And some of the language around it – twittering, twitterati, twittersphere, tweeting, tweeps – sounds frivolous and lightweight. For those of you who tweet, nothing I say here will be a surprise.  For those of you who don’t, some of it may be. Before I start, let me just say that this is not a […]

A case of “caveat celebritas” – celebrity beware?

The High Court [Ferdinand v MGN Ltd [2011] EWHC 2454 (QB)] recently dismissed footballer Rio Ferdinand’s claim against the Sunday Mirror for damages after the newspaper published what Nicol J called a “kiss and paid for telling” story about the ex-England captain.   Ferdinand claimed that the article infringed his right to privacy, was a […]

GE Oil & Gas – Putting the A into ADR

While standard forms of litigation or arbitration may be well suited to resolving complex, high value disputes, they can be too time consuming and expensive for the determination of low value disputes of a more routine nature. In Italy, GE Oil & Gas has adopted a pioneering form of online dispute resolution (ODR) with its […]

Mark Brandon

Middle class twit, er, tweet

  Why tweet? I suspect this is something many lawyers have asked themselves, once, before going on to do something decidedly more interesting with their lives. Or maybe, as US movie star Ashton Kutcher has apparently just done having said something infra dig on his Twitter feed, they have instead outsourced it all to a […]

Jordan Furlong

Disenfranchising the turkeys

Few countries outside North America have a holiday equivalent to Thanksgiving Day   By Jordan Furlong Steeped in a mixture of European and Native traditions, Thanksgiving in the United States (November 24 this year) has become a major event replete with huge family reunions, massive Rockwellian feasts, and prime-time NFL games. (Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving earlier in […]

Paul Gilbert
1

The hidden burden of the general counsel role

In another life I once held positions as general counsel in two major companies and so watching the News International phone hacking story play out in the press and on television I cannot help having a thought for Tom Crone and wondering what he must be going through now and what it was like for […]

8

QC gets on his bike over road safety issues

As regular readers of the Back Page will doubtless have noticed, there are lots of lawyers out there who like nothing better than dressing up in Lycra and hitting the roads on two wheels. In that respect, Martin Porter QC is not unusual. The personal injury specialist commutes to work most days by bike, and in his rooms at 2 […]

Robert Postlethwaite

Work Life Quiz: Robert Postlethwaite, Postlethwaite

What was your first-ever job?   Collecting then washing dirty glasses in a pub. I had to wear a horrible maroon nylon jacket. What was your worst ­experience as a trainee? I’d better tread carefully here, so I’ll just mention the winter evening when the senior partner whose room I sat in (he rarely gave […]

Taylor Wessing, Ince lawyers chart new course to Hamburg shipping boutique

A group of eight lawyers, four each from Taylor Wessing and Ince & Co’s Hamburg offices, have split off to establish a shipping law boutique in the German city.   Fleet Hamburg consists of the entirety of Taylor Wessing’s transport and logistics team in Hamburg, with the addition of three shipping litigators and an insolvency […]

Robin Simon

Robin Simon

The lawyers at specialist insurance and professional indemnity (PI) boutique Robin Simon like to think of themselves as working at the country’s “smallest national firm”. That, at any rate, is how managing partner David Simon describes the firm he co-­founded in 2003 alongside fellow Hammonds refugee and Robin Simon senior partner Michael Robin. “We’re a […]

Stephen Kines

Ex-2Birds partner targets Asian ally for ABS in City

With ABSs the talk of the town, a new frontier has opened up: Asian-owned ABSs. Former Bird & Bird ­partner Stephen Kines, who set up the firm’s Central and Eastern European operations, is leading the charge. Having left Bird & Bird in the autumn, Kines has set up Kines Global, a law firm development company the aim of […]

Philip Webber
1

Opinion: European ruling risks pushing out the scientists

Scientists have reacted with shock and dismay at a recent decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the patentability of human stem cells. The decision, issued on 18 October, states that inventions that are based on human embryonic stem cells cannot be patented in the EU on ethical grounds. The […]