DLA gets the cheap seats as Tulkinghorn endures two days without football

Two days without football - can you believe it? Tulkinghorn couldn’t either, and went into hibernation in silent protest at the lack of legitimate reasons to duck out at 4pm for a swift pint or three.

Joachim Fleury, head of TMT at Clifford Chance flew out to Germany for the biggest anti-climax of the World Cup since England’s last foray forward - the Argentina vs Netherlands game.

Fleury is Dutch. Being a Europhile kinda guy he wanted to take some German clients but a corruption uproar a few years back means that German lawyers are, or at least Fleury’s German lawyers, are unwilling to take gifts.

Foolish boys, or perhaps they knew something the rest of us didn’t. But Fleury managed to cunningly get around the problem by inviting a non-lawyer head of M&A, who circumvents the corruption issue because he doesn’t officially instruct lawyers. Honest.

Avid readers will recall Tulkinghorn’s jealous incredulity at Clifford Chance’s audacious show of magic circle wealth, taking a private jet from Alan Sugar’s fleet out to the games.

It set a standard to match, but if anyone was going to have a crack at it, you would imagine it would be that global monolith DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary.

Joint global head of TMT Simon Levine and joint global head of litigation Julian Stait went on a joint global jolly to the joint global World Cup match of England v Sweden.

For a such a high profile group of partners escorting about eight or so others, you would have though they would have been able to do better than the cheap seats on Germany's favourite budget airline, Air Berlin.

It’s getting to the business end of the tournament, and Tulkinghorn still hasn’t managed to sort himself a ticket yet. What a shambles. See you next week for post-England agony or ecstasy.