Linklaters, Lisbon and laptops

It’s all going off in Lisbon: Linklaters has just fired three associates in its Portugal office after discovering their plan to leave the firm and set up the Lisbon office of a competitor. See story.

But which is the competitor firm? The associates left a document with their business plan on a Linklaters laptop (doh!) - with the name of international firm left out.

But here’s a clue. There are two blanks where the firm’s name should be.

And so the entire Lisbon legal community reckons it’s Clifford Chance.

But Clifford Chance is having none of it. In fact, one Clifford Chance source told The Lawyer: “We don’t want to be near Portugal. It’s a sh*** market and I don’t care which firm it is, but it’s not us. (It was unclear whether he was nursing a tumbler of Mateus Rose at the time.)

So if it’s not Clifford Chance, then who is it? Is Portugal really that unappetising? And did the two spaces in the international firm’s name have room for an ampersand?

We’ll let you know.