Report this comment to a moderator

Harbottle forbidden from responding to News International's put-down

Its tough when a law firm of impeccable reputation cannot answer back. But that is why our duties of confidentiality and privilege are there to protect our clients in the first place. Another clue to the answer of what their retainer actually was may lie in a quote from Glen Aitcheson, Harbottle and Lewis’ managing partner in a Bloomberg phone interview. The company refused, Mr Aitcheson is quoted “so we are still unable to respond in any detail as to our advice or the scope of our instructions in 2007, which is a matter of great regret,”. The clue lies in the word scope. I suspect Harbottle & Lewis would like to explain what they were actually asked to do in the first place, namely their scope of work which may have been very limited in both range and conclusion. I would guess that a fee would have been agreed based on that scope. The unwanted publicity only serves as a reminder to law firms to ask themselves questions when taking on a high profile brief or one that requires examining possible wrong doing whether it can be carried out to the standards of the firm on the basis of the intended scope. Its that 20:20 hindsight thing.

20-Jul-2011

10:52 am