Mishcons to tender for lucrative Diana fund work

The long-awaited tender for the prestigious and lucrative legal work for the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund was announced last week - and Mishcon de Reya has already confirmed that it will be applying for the work.

The fund, which has around £70m to spend, is inviting tenders for law firms to provide it with IP, commercial law and charity law advice.

Mishcons has been handling all the fund's legal advice but it was widely criticised in January when it reportedly billed the fund £500,000 for 11 weeks work. Mishcons partner Anthony Julius also came under fire over his position as fund chairman.

But a fund spokeswoman said Julius, now a Mishcons' consultant, would play no part in the selection process: "He will be out of the room when those questions are dealt with by the other trustees." She added the fund had an open mind on whether one firm should do all the work or not.

Mishcons partner Kevin Gold confirmed that his firm was tendering. He said: "It will be a sizeable amount of work, but not to the same degree as before as the fund now does a large part of the work itself."