Instructions of the week 30.01.2003

M4 corridor firm Morgan Cole has been appointed principal legal adviser to the National Assembly for Wales for the next three years, replacing Eversheds, which won the first tender in 1999 when the assembly began work.

Among other things, Morgan Cole will advise on employment, dispute management - including highways, grants, debt recovery, personal injury, and land tribunal claims - and non-contentious land and highways issues.

London firm RadcliffesLeBrasseur has won another competitive tender to advise the Central and North West London Mental Health NHS Trust, which provides services on more than 75 sites.

Last year, the firm won the trust's general and litigation work; it has now also gained the employment contract.

City firm Field Fisher Waterhouse has advised Scottish-based property company Talisker Holdings for the first time following a referral from its European Legal Alliance Scottish partner firm Harper Macleod.

The firm advised on the 24.5 million acquisition

of the Raven portfolio of industrial, retail and office investments from Ventnor Group, advised by Manchester firm Kuit Steinart Levy.

City firm Gouldens has been retained by cable television company NTL Europe to act for it going forward as the NTL group emerges from chapter 11 insolvency protection in the US.

The firm has been advising NTL Europe for the past four months on the group's restructuring.

Magic circle firm Allen & Overy has completed its first deal for CIBER (UK), a subsidiary of the US-based international systems integration consultancy.

It acted on the offer made by NM Rothschild & Son on behalf of CIBER to acquire ECsoft Group in a deal that values ECsoft at 34 million.

Ashurst Morris Crisp advised NM Rothschild and US firm Shaw Pittman acted for ECsoft.

City firm Charles Russell has been appointed media lawyers to Hachette Filipacchi UK, part of the French-based Hachette Filipacchi Medias, the largest publisher in the world.

The UK subsidiary publishes leading magazines such as Elle, Red, Sugar, B, Inside Soap, and tvhits.

The firm will be advising on issues such as copyright, defamation, privacy and contempt.

Central London property firm Forsters has been named as legal adviser to Suffolk County Council over the disposal for major development of about 170 acres of land on the edge of Sudbury.

Manchester-based Halliwell Landau has won the competitive tender to advise the East Lancashire Market Restructuring Shadow Board on appropriate organisational structures to manage the east Lancashire market restructuring pathfinder.

A government initiative designed to tackle areas of low demand and failed housing markets, the pathfinder initiative is likely to include 70-80,000 properties in the older urban areas of east Lancashire's principal towns, and also ties into a broad regeneration programme for the region.

Pendle Borough Council ran the tender on behalf of six local authorities.