21-Sep-2007

Most employment lawyers would give their right arms to negotiate a £15m exit package.

But Jose Mourinho's departure from Chelsea appears to have been done with the minimum of lawyerly input. We'd be delighted to be put right on this, but the pint-sized Portuguese is rumoured by football sources only to have used his agent George Mendez.

So are UK lawyers out of favour at Stamford Bridge? Roman Abramovich's divorce was handled under Russian law with no regard to the feelings of the hordes of matrimonial lawyers available in London. What's more, his consigliere Bruce Buck is not a Brit but a US partner at Skadden Arps.

At least Mourinho used a UK lawyer - in the form of Elizabeth Robertson, late of Peters & Peters - when it mattered most. Robertson, if you remember, was called in to represent Mourinho's dog Leya on an immigration matter.

It makes you proud to be British.

20-Sep-2007

"I counted them all out and I counted them all back."

Not soldiers, of course, or Chelsea managers, but solicitors out of and into private practice. Today ITV announced that it had enticed LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae partner Andrew Garard back in-house, while Reynolds Porter Chamberlain has recruited BBC lawyer Jaron Lewis into its partnership (see story).

Garard joined LeBoeuf a year ago from Cable & Wireless, where he was general counsel. Prior to that he was in-house chief at Reuters. And prior to that, many moons ago, he was a corporate lawyer at Clifford Chance and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Now he adds ITV to that glittering CV after his short detour into private practice.

He has yet to comment on his reason for leaving LeBoeuf, but there's not many who can boast of leading the legal teams at three FTSE100 companies. That's some hat trick.

19-Sep-2007

The atmosphere at CMS Cameron McKenna's Moscow office must be decidedly chilly these days after a third lawyer left for Clifford Chance (see story).

Former office managing partner David Griston, Moscow banking head Jared Grubb and now energy senior associate Maria Oleinik have all fled CMS. You can almost hear the harsh Russian winds whistling through the office from London.

Although the recent closure of the CMS Moscow office canteen will have played a big part in the departures, some market sources have pointed to the firm's focus on its new Ukraine office as a source of discontent in Russia. Let's face it, relations between the two countries have never been the warmest.

CMS has to be careful that it doesn't play too much with its new toy in Ukraine and take its eye off the ball in the competitive Moscow market: it might well get frozen out.

18-Sep-2007

His exit had been rumoured for some time, but Simmons & Simmons confirmed the retirement of legendary global head of communications and outsourcing David Barrett today. See story.

Barrett was part of an illustrious in-house team at IBM in the 1980s that spawned such IT law luminaries as John Yates and Chris Hoyle of Beachcroft and Paul Beckett, who went on to run for parliament in the Isle of Man.

Barrett went on to launch Theodore Goddard's IT group in 1989, before moving to Dibb Lupton Moorhead (now DLA Piper) in 1993, Arnold & Porter in 1998 and his final home, Simmons, in 2000.

Barrett was one of the profession's most colourful characters. He was a real pioneer of IT law and quick to spot trends such as public sector outsourcing and offshore outsourcing.

The Lawyer can now reveal Barrett was affectionately known as General Noriega during his early career in private practice. Apparently this was because of a a perceived likeness to the former Panamanian dictator now languishing in a US prison. We hope the similarities end there.

17-Sep-2007

Competition stories, it seems, are like buses. You wait around for ages for one to arrive and then two come along at once.

Europe's Court of First Instance (CFI) has had a particularly busy morning, ruling on two competition-related cases with wide repercussions.

For the first, we really did have to wait a long time: nine years, to be precise. The CFI upheld Microsoft's record fine for abuse of dominant position [see story].

Meanwhile, the second poses a quandary for in-house lawyers, with the CFI ruling that the European Commission was correct in thinking that communication between general counsel and their in-house clients is not privileged [see story].

It seems that the big winner of today's judgment is the Commission's frequently maligned competition regulator. It's been waiting an age itself to have such a boost.

No word as yet on whether it's got the power to do anything about those darn buses, though.