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Shadbolt leavers more than happy

Excited or delighted some people may be but there are many other people left wondering how this all came about - clients competitors and staff alike. Even to outsiders Shadbolt & Co (as fans still remember it) clearly had many loyal and hardworking staff who deserved a better outcome and so did its clients. This was never a merger (see earlier articles in The Lawyer) - nor a "rescue" (as you now call it) - it looks more like the splintering of a "fractious" (your word) group of partners who were unable to keep it together. “Not big enough, strong enough or well-known enough" is not the correct diagnosis - "divided and dysfunctional" looks like the real story. As its clients and even its competitors could see a lot of hard work went into building up from scratch a firm that was described as "the legal success story of the decade" and won the Queen's Award for International Trade. Its reputation and client service were second-to-none. Whatever happened inside the firm in the past couple of years that has led to its disintegration is a real indictment and the fragmentation of the know-how and experience is a real loss to the construction industry that it served so well.

26-Jan-2010

2:59 pm