Tulkinghorn: Dickinson flees

Dickinson flees

The sight made poor old Tulkinghorn choke on his Yorkshire Tea, for after all is Dickie Dees not in the process of pulling out of York entirely and shifting shop to Leeds?

Of course, the firm is merely stating its commitment to Yorkshire (and Yorkshire folk), and those can be found just as well in the West Riding as the North.

But Tulkinghorn can’t help wondering if the adverts too will vanish at the end of the year along with the office.

Picture stricture

Tulkinghorn threw the book – atlas to be precise – at one of his minions last week after they failed to spot that the stunning ­picture used to illustrate the Paris special report was not actually of the City of Light, but instead showed Italian fashion capital Milan.

Although the Duomo di Milano and Paris’s Notre Dame do share some ­similarities (er, they’re both cathedrals with spiky bits and gargoyles in cities where style rules), it should be noted that Notre Dame is situated on an island and not in a bustling plaza, as in the photo.

Top marks to all the well-travelled lawyers who kindly emailed Tulkinghorn to point out the gaffe.

Twitterat-lie

Twitter was all abuzz last week when College of Law chief executive Nigel ­Savage made his first foray on the social network – or did he?

While he has no clue about this Tweeting malarkey – save, of course, the merry chirping of our feathered friends as he has his daily constitutional – Tulkinghorn has his doubts. Despite many becoming very excited and promptly adding @ProfNigelSavage to their Twitter following, the posts suggest that it is in fact being run by an impostor.

A look at the ‘About’ blurb rather gives the game away, claiming as it does that Savage has “had more impact on legal education than you’ve had hot ­dinners. Lives by the sword but will never die.”

But perhaps it is the real deal – after all, 60-odd ­fellow twitterati seem to think so.

Cooky grumbles

It is not unusual for television crews to turn up at the picturesque Inner Temple looking to shoot a slice of Victorian drama. Usually it’s at the weekends, so nobody gets to see the fun.

Imagine Tulkinghorn’s surprise, then, to find that the prestigious members of the Temple were treated to some reality TV delights earlier this month. No, not The Only Way Is Essex, but the masterminds behind MasterChef were in town.

Anybody daring to take a few cheeky snaps was instantly chased away by the show’s producers. That treat was reserved for the diners at the ­Middle Temple Hall that evening, who enjoyed the fruits of said masterchefs’ labours.

Tulkinghorn, of course, was one of them (in his dreams).

Romanesque style

The Abramovich-­Berezovsky case has a lot of fascinating angles to it – intrigue, ­backstabbing, vast amounts of wealth…

So Tulkinghorn was more than a ­little bemused to hear from his scribes that the only thing lawyers ­wanted to talk about when asked about the case was Abramovich’s legal team – a striking phalanx of perfectly groomed lawyers from Skadden.

It’s a long case, so it’s always nice to have a pretty panorama while in court. So is this what law firms mean when they talk about added value?

Cooper to give City both barrels

To the space before the hallowed dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, where a pitched battle of words is set to break out between protestors against the excesses of the City and the church. As we reported last week, 25 Bedford Row barrister John Cooper QC has been instructed by the Occupy London Stock Exchange protestors to defend their right to shiver in tents in the name of anticapitalism.

While Cooper might not be joining his clients in camping outside the cathedral, he has had to adjust to rather different working conditions than the calm confines of Gray’s Inn. The instruction itself was taken in the camp’s ‘legal tent’, with Cooper granted the honour of an actual chair while his clients perched on cardboard boxes.

Perhaps not quite the austerity image the campers were aiming for.