Anglo-US law firm mergers throw up cultural mixes that are often entertainingly highlighted in their launch parties.


For example, Reed Smith Richards Butler is to be congratulated for getting in early for the biggest and glitziest bash of the year honours, with a hugely well attended party at the Royal Courts of Justice in London last week.



But, oh to have been a fly on the wall during the party planning partnership meetings. The Yanks apparently wanted something quintessentially English, so the Brits offered up the Victorian gothic venue in the Strand, which has the added piquancy of being designed by the solicitor-turned-architect, George Edmund Street. But somehow the 1870s building wasn't quite enough.



'Give us more of that olde worlde Englande,' must have cried the partners from across the pond. What did they end up with? A troupe of possibly resting actors done up in Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI-style outfits to dole out the canapés.



If this is a sign of the future, then the 2007 law firm party scene is going to enter into new realms of the bizarre.