As another tumultuous year for the legal profession draws to a close, we reflect on the highs and the lows, while various personalities look ahead to the key events of 2006

Welcome to the 2005 Gazette awards. There is no need to strong-arm a few partners and clients to sit for hours at the table that has cost you £1,500 and pretend to laugh at offensive lawyer jokes from your star host (whose fee is the equivalent of several of those tables). Just sit back and join us in reflecting on a year that has brought the usual mix of the important, the impressive, the worrying, the funny and the just plain odd.


Biggest surprise of the year: The government’s decision in October to adopt the Clementi reforms of legal services regulation came with one major exception – to push ahead with multi-disciplinary practices (MDPs), when Sir David said his more limited legal disciplinary practices should be the first step. It had been assumed that US corporate scandals had put an end to the MDP dream. Less surprising was the AA’s announcement in November that it intends to enter the legal services market when it is allowed to. The motoring organisation will not be the last, we wager.


Most expansionist law firm of the year: Since merging to create DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary on 1 January, the UK/US giant has continued its march across the world, opening offices in Frankfurt, Kiev, St Petersburg, Tbilisi, Beijing and Tokyo, with Dubai to follow shortly, and setting up associations with firms in South Africa and Egypt. Look out Ulan Bator – at this rate DLA Piper will have nowhere else to plant its flag.


Fastest-fading suntan of the year: After four years in Florida, former City solicitor Michael Fielding voluntarily returned to the UK to plead guilty to charges of stealing £6.5 million by making 140 withdrawals from client accounts at Lawrence Graham. He was sentenced last month to eight years in prison.


Newest broom of the year: The new regime for conditional fee agreements kicked off last month, while a slew of the kind of technical challenges it is meant to end hit the courts in relation to the old system. They may be able to sit together inside the Civil Justice Council’s so-called ‘big tent’, but will claimant and defendant solicitors, and insurance companies, ever really learn to trust one another?


Hike of the year: Look no further than some of the court fees that are set to go up by as much as 650%. There is nobody outside of the government who considers its policy of pursuing full cost recovery through fees to be a good one, but there is no sign of the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) pulling back.


Saga of the year: Hard to see past the Commercial Court for this one. Everyone agrees that the current building is massively below par in every respect but most of what we get from the DCA on a replacement is words, rather than action. A special mention also for the DCA’s consultation on reforming court dress, which finished in August – August 2003, that is. Forget the long grass, it has been kicked into the Forbidden Forest.


Most exhibitionist firm of the year: You cannot see Slaughter and May projecting a painting of a naked woman on to its office building, but trendy London solicitors Collyer-Bristow marked the opening of their art gallery in exactly that manner, using a painting by partner Steven Heffer – the dubiously named ‘Titi 1’ – to illustrate its exhibition called ‘The Body’.


Best campaign of the year: If you want to collect tax, at least buy a scanner that can recognise zeros that are filled in on your forms. That is one of the many lessons of the stamp duty land tax shambles. The Law Society’s campaign to improve the administration of the tax has borne fruit, and to judge by the huge weight of letters we have received on this issue, it was much needed.


Worst campaign of the year: The ‘strike’ by criminal legal aid barristers generated a fair amount of column inches and a warning against collective action from the Office of Fair Trading, but by the time barristers on the midland and northern circuits called off their protest last month, legal aid rates had not changed one iota and the DCA was even more ticked off with the bar than usual. ‘We have clearly won the argument,’ said Michael Redfern QC, leader of the northern circuit. So that’s all right then.


Most unlikely legal sportsmen of the year: Who else but the recently established German National Solicitors Cricket XI? So Anglophile are these German lawyers that they even want to call themselves ‘solicitors’.


Least popular City lawyer of the year: Nice Guy Beringer, senior partner of Allen & Overy, sweeps home for his role in advising Lord Carter of Coles on the latter’s breathlessly anticipated review of legal aid procurement. The closest many City partners get to legal aid is driving past a law centre where their trainees are helping out pro bono, but is there something the high street can actually learn from the highly commercial environment of the City?


Window dressing of the year: The DCA’s legal aid impact test – which aims to ensure that other departments (by which it means the Home Office) considers the effect on legal aid when formulating policy – was a welcome response to a criticism often levelled by lawyers. However, it is not yet clear whether anything is done with the result.


Most targeted solicitor of the year: Muddassar Arani’s role in advising high-profile terrorist suspects, such as Abu Hamza and one of the London bombing suspects, has placed her in a heavily critical tabloid spotlight – which she has labelled as Islamophobic at times – and both her and her staff at the west London firm Arani & Co have received death threats, abusive calls and threats to bomb the office. She rightly asks why no other solicitors handling terror cases have been targeted in this manner.


Spoilsport firm of the year: Hats off to trade union firm Thompsons for its press release – less than two hours after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics – warning that workers’ rights must be respected amid the pressure to deliver the infrastructure in time.


Scare of the year: Edging out the so-called ‘compensation culture’ is the one we fall for every year – in the run-up to the professional indemnity insurance renewal period, insurers and brokers issue dire warnings that premiums are set to rocket, so solicitors had better renew early/shop around/run around in circles with their fingers in the ears shouting ‘I can’t hear you’. This was set to be exacerbated by the decision to double the minimum sum insured. And what happened in the end? The overall basic premium spend fell £7 million to £234 million.


Litigation of the year: The good one was Bowman v Fels, in which the Court of Appeal – following interventions from the Law Society and Bar Council – relieved litigators of the requirement to report suspicions of money laundering (a rare lull in this increasing, if necessary, burden on solicitors). Less good is the start of litigation against firms that were on The Accident Group panel. With the 700 or so practices affected promising a fight, this looks set to run and run. Meanwhile, the chutzpah award goes to the US lawyer who sued for $100 million because she had not been warned that lying while giving a sworn testimony could result in criminal perjury charges. The judge, unsurprisingly, gave her the shortest of short shrifts.


Least shocking survey of the year: A poll of north-west law firms found that solicitors considered barristers to be arrogant. Who would have thought it? Close behind is the survey by the Sutton Trust which found that the old school tie still dominates at City law firms.


Relaunch of the year: A dead heat between the new QC scheme – more open and transparent than ever before but still to win over sceptical solicitors, who account for just 12 of the 443 applicants – and New Claims Direct by national law firm Russell Jones & Walker. Highlighting the profession’s uneasy relationship with the claims management sector, it is clearly a risk to take on the bones of the company once dubbed ‘Shames Direct’ by the Sun newspaper, but the brand recognition must make it worthwhile.


Worst catering of the year: We regularly receive word of law firms’ efforts for charity, but this one took the biscuit – or should that be the preserved boneless snake fish head? Paul Smith, chief executive officer of Bolton firm Keoghs, took part in his own ‘bush tucker trial’ in aid of local children’s hospice Derian House. Joining the fish head in Mr Smith’s cast-iron stomach were the likes of dried worms and scorpion in toffee.


Most expensive reform of the year: Announced this year, but the pain is yet to come, is the £13 million one-off cost of the new legal services regulatory regime. The profession’s leaders do not see why it should have to pay for reforms being imposed on it, but there’s more chance of the DCA shelling out for higher legal aid rates (that is, nil).


Growing issue of the year: The question of diversity in the profession, especially at City law firms, is moving beyond ‘why oh why’ to more practical measures, such as the Black Solicitors Network’s diversity league table, the Law Society’s diversity access scheme, DCA proposals on judicial diversity and the call from the Legal Services Consultative Panel that firms which want to bid for public contracts should have to publish diversity data. Statistically, there is a higher proportion of solicitors from ethnic minorities than in the popul-ation as a whole, but the perception – and reality in certain quarters of the profession – is otherwise. Look out too for miners’ compensation, which is brewing into a major scandal. Also coming to the boil is the contro-versial introduction next spring of price-competitive tendering for criminal legal aid work in London.


Most political lawyer of the year: North London criminal defence solicitor David Burrowes scored the most unexpected Conservative gain at May’s election, taking schools minister Stephen Twigg’s Enfield Southgate seat, which was 114th on the Tories’ list of targets. Campa-igning solicitor Yvonne Hossack is runner-up simply for standing in Bury South under the banner of the Short Fat Solicitor Party.


Dodgiest e-mail of the year (the Bradley Chait Memorial Award): Baker & McKenzie senior associate Richard Phillips found himself splashed over all the papers in June for an e-mail to his secretary asking her to pay a £4 dry cleaning bill for splashing ketchup over his trousers – and for her sarcastic reply. He left the firm to take up long-standing study plans. Close second is the Dutch law student whose wrongly addressed e-mail about the end of his ‘stupid’ legal education – and his desire to find an employer ‘crazy enough to dump a suitcase full of money in my lap every month’ – ended up being forwarded to pretty much every law firm in Holland.


Worst coffee of the year: Barrow-in-Furness duty solicitor Cath McAteer was inadvertently poisoned at a Cumbrian police station in April after drinking coffee that contained insecticide. ‘Next time I go there, I shall go armed with my own flask,’ she told the Gazette.


Scariest solicitor of the year: The welcome revival of ‘Doctor Who’ brought with it this hideous vision of the future – the Moxx of Balhoon, from the solicitors Jolko & Jolko. We know the future for the profession post-Clementi may be scary and alien, but this is ridiculous.


Worst spelling of the year: Research by search engine Yell.com found that ‘solicitor’ is the third most commonly misspelled and mistyped word when people are using the site. Versions included: solicator, solicetor, soliciter, solicotor and solisitor.


Judge of the year: Duncan Birrell, a prosecutor in Lancashire, became the first Crown Prosecution Service lawyer to be appointed a judge when he was made a deputy district judge in the magistrates’ court in February. Less happily, His Honour Judge Medawar QC at Snaresbrook Crown Court managed the not inconsiderable feat of seeing three separate convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal on the same July day following criticisms of his handling of each one, and especially his hostile attitude towards the defence.


Bonus of the year: News in February that the Solicitors Indemnity Fund surplus had been paid off in five years, rather than the expected seven, means millions of pounds of contributions will now be paid back to the profession.


Biller of the year: A US lawyer paid $1.2 million to settle allegations – without accepting liability – that he billed a client for up to 94 hours in a single day. Over a two-year period, he was alleged to have charged for more than 24 hours of work in a single day an impressive 135 times. On one day in 2000, he was said to have reviewed 113 files, made and received 91 phone calls, and written 72 letters. That’s the kind of lawyer City firms would like to recruit. Let’s hope Lord Carter doesn’t hear about him.



Ian Kelcey, chairman, Criminal Law Solicitors Association: ‘I don’t think competitive tendering will be adopted. The government has woken up to the fact that it is not a viable option. The market is too immature. It will be extremely difficult to recruit young lawyers into doing criminal law, and I envisage that a considerable number of firms will cease to do criminal law in the next year.


‘As far as the Carter review of legal aid is concerned, I do not hold out any great hope of a quick fix, as without extra money, all you are doing is moving deckchairs on the Titanic. I would like to think that the government will begin to recognise the valuable part that criminal defence lawyers play as an integral part of the system, and not be seen as the opposition. We all seek to achieve justice – we just come at it from different angles.’




Kevin Martin, Law Society President: ‘I hope 2006 will be the year that the tide turns on legal aid. Lord Carter’s review provides the long overdue chance for proper and sensible redistribution of the legal aid budget and the Law Society will continue to work hard to make the most of this golden opportunity.


‘Over the coming months, we will be asking solicitors to help us design the future Law Society and tell us what their expectations are of a modern 21st century professional body. I hope that all solicitors will take the opportunity to have their say.


‘The Legal Services Bill should enable us to create a more flexible, dynamic and consumer-focused legal services market. It will help build on the steps already taken by the Law Society to bolster consumer confidence in regulation and complaints handling. Solicitors play an important role in standing up for individuals against the state and the new regulatory arrangements must respect that independence. I hope that our new consumer complaints board will continue to improve the way complaints from consumers are dealt with.’




Richard Miller, director, Legal Aid Practitioners Group: ‘I think CDS Direct will prove neither as bad as its critics forecast nor as good as the Legal Services Commission claims, and there will be extensive argument about whether to prolong it or put it out of its misery. The DCA will face another overspend because nothing it has done apart from Bridget Prentice’s impact assessment goes to the cause of the increases. Competitive tendering will be watered down, and may even be abandoned. There will be growing recognition of the regulation White Paper’s implications for the independence of defence lawyers.’




Tony Williams, management consultant at Jomati and former managing partner at Clifford Chance: ‘There will be serious merger discussions between a large UK and US firm in the next year, although not necessarily a completed merger. One medium-sized firm will be seriously damaged by the departure of a major team. There’ll be bumper profits for the top-ten firms – and a knighthood for [DLA chief] Nigel Knowles.’




Paul Marsh, chairman, Law Society’s land law and conveyancing committee: ‘By March, home information packs (HIPs) will be the principal topic of conversation for everyone involved in the residential property market. By August, the dry run of HIPs will not have answered any questions. By November, the first major financial casualties of HIPs will have occurred – finance directors are going to start knocking on the door of some of the companies that are claiming they will be producing 2.5 million HIPs a year, when there are only 1.8 million house sales each year, and the market is likely to drop.


‘The Law Society’s future will hang on how HIPs work. If solicitors lose their position in the residential conveyancing market, then I would imagine the Law Society will cease to exist. It can’t survive with no members.’




David McIntosh, chairman, City of London Law Society: ‘I foresee a greater role for the City of London Law Society in helping to make sure that the role of City law firms, their value to business and to the UK economy, and their not-for-profit contribution are fully understood.’




David Barnes, global head of corporate, Linklaters: ‘In 2006, deals will continue to become more cross-border/international across most sectors. I expect to see more mergers and acquisitions into the US and Europe from Asian companies. There will also be further consolidation in the financial services sector.’