You know when you’ve been Trumped

As Donald Trump brews up yet another storm across the Atlantic the ongoing saga surrounding his Scottish ambitions has taken an interesting turn.

The Lawyer’s associate editor Matt Byrne outlines not just one Trump tale in his US blog but two. The property mogul has been courting controversy Stateside by building a tower that obstructs the view from Lovells’ Chicago office. The firm takes its accommodation very seriously (a month barely goes by without a Lovells partner/PR/toilet cleaner banging on about its wonderful London HQ), so naturally its lawyers are pretty upset. As is half the city, it seems.

So to rural Aberdeenshire where Trump, advised by Dundas & Wilson, has opened a hornet’s nest by trying to develop a world-class golf resort on the windy North Sea coast. First he received planning permission, then an Aberdeenshire Council committee knocked him back via the chairman’s casting vote. Now the Scottish Executive has stepped in and the chairman has been sacked, wreaking havoc in the Scottish planning system.

While Scotland and Chicago reel, it’s seems unlikely that such storms will ruffle a single hair on Trump’s architecturally coiffed head.

12-Dec-07
Latham v. Shearman
Just when you thought all had gone quiet in the leveraged finance world, it turns out there’s some elbowing behind the scenes.

The news today that Shearman & Sterling‘s London office has hired a high yield partner out of rival US firm Latham & Watkins shows that credit crunch or not, getting your debt team is going to be a priority for US firms in London in 2008.

Latham is still number one for high yield in Europe, but Shearman has needed to rebuild after star partner David Beveridge went back to the US. Anyone who’s been inside the Latham debt machine is a catch, and Shearman’s hopes for a debt resurgence are now resting on Jacques McChesney’s youthful shoulders.

No pressure there, then.

11-Dec-07
A wee bit of Irish blarney

Declan Moylan, outgoing managing partner of Irish firm Mason Hayes & Curran, is not what one might call a wallflower. This is the man who rocked the Irish legal establishment by publishing the firm’s turnover in an Irish Times article, forcing other Irish firms to break with tradition and follow suit.

Imagine the shock, then, at The Lawyer HQ when the firm sent out a press release announcing he is to “step down” from the managing partner role (see story).

Declan’s not the kind of man who would step down from such a position, even if he has done it for nigh on nine years. Given that he’s about to take up the chairmanship with the aim of revolutionising the firm’s international reach, it seems clear that stepping down is the last thing on his mind.

Declan was responsible for the firm opening in London and New York and is looking to expand the firm’s transatlantic reach to the West Coast of America.

We’re probably arguing the toss about semantics here but to us that seems very much like a step UP.

10-Dec-07
The Hall of Fame is here

The wait is over. After weeks of deliberation, with a profusion of nominations from www.thelawyer.com readers to sift, the first instalment of our Hall of Fame has been made public.

Launched to coincide with our 20th anniversary celebrations, the Hall of Fame lists the great and the good who have been pioneers in the legal profession over the last two decades.

Click here to view the list from A to K, which includes feminist icon Dame Mary Arden, the first woman to serve as a High Court judge and first female chair of the Law Commission.

But there are also lesser known names. Harriet Creamer is included for the role she played in giving credence to the idea of knowledge management lawyers, now a mainstay in most City firms.

Lord Peter Goldsmith QC is on the list, more for his career as a vocal pro bono advocate than his time as a controversial Attorney General. He sits alongside Imran Khan, who worked tirelessly on behalf of the parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence to have the police own up to institutional racism.

So fictional nominee Atticus Finch didn’t make it in the end. The book is open on who will appear in the L to Z section, published in The Lawyer next Monday (December 17).