Crisis meetings are being held at top firms across the City as we speak.

Or if they aren't, then they should be.

Under more pressure than ever from those pesky and, let's be honest, absurdly profitable US invaders, it seems that they are now facing a new threat, and this time it comes from Tunbridge Wells.

Obiter first spotted evidence for this in a press release headlined 'Linklaters loses employment specialist to Cripps Harries Hall'.

Poor Linklaters with its 500 million-plus turnover, how will it ever recover from the departure of a managing associate? Days later, another release arrives, trumpeting that 'City firms can't keep their staff...

from the grasp of Cripps Harries Hall'.

Apparently, Denton Wilde Sapte and Lawrence Graham are the latest firms to have 'both lost employees to the rapidly expanding regional firm'.

Will the likes of Clifford Chance be forced to close? And will the last lawyer left in the City please switch the light out? But what's this? Another release just in from Kent: 'Keeping London Switched On', about a deal for an electricity company.

Is there no end to Cripps's ambition?