The art of good advice

Victoria MacCallum takes a look at the diverse issues dealt with by lawyers working in the world of art at leading auction house Christie's

The closest that most lawyers get to fine art is - for the lucky few - strolling past the modern masters hanging in the firm's foyer, or, more likely for the majority, gazing wistfully at an auction catalogue in one hand while clutching a recently bought lottery ticket in the other.However, for the in-house legal department at fine art and antiques auction house Christie's, being surrounded by everything from Caravaggios to Chinese porcelain is all part of the day job - albeit a very welcome part.The delicate porcelain belies a task which can include troubleshooting anything from forged works of art to price-fixing allegations of the sort recently levelled against Christie's in connection with the US trial of former Sotheby's chairman, Alfred Taubman.'It's impossible to work here and not love art,' says group legal adviser Johanna Hall, who arrived at Christie's eight years ago fresh from a diploma in History of Art, after a number of years in private practice as a solicitor.

'Being surrounded by so many beautiful things, and working with people whose entire life revolves around art, means that a passion for it is bound to rub off on you.'Of Christie's three-strong legal team - headed by head of legal and company secretary Richard Aydon, assisted by Ms Hall and Martin Wilson - only Ms Hall has a qualification in art history, which, says Mr Aydon, is arguably a good thing.

He was formerly a partner at City firm Stephenson Harwood.'I think it's important to draw the line between who's providing the legal advice and who's giving the art historical advice,' he says.

'If you have a lawyer who fancies himself as a Rembrandt expert, then the lines between your areas become blurred and it's not efficient for problem-solving.'Instead, he sees his team's work as a hybrid of the worlds of art, business and culture.

'We operate at the intersection of all three areas, which produces a very interesting workload,' he says.Mr Wilson agrees with the need for lawyers to stick to their day jobs and to think as lawyers rather than 'wannabe' art historians.

'In a fast-moving environment such as this, advice from ivory towers wouldn't go down well, and so you have to be ruthlessly commercial,' he explains.The need for a strong business head becomes clear when the scale of Christie's operations is considered.

The company's London headquarters alone - at King Street in St James with a smaller saleroom in South Kensington - houses 800 staff, and more than half a million lots are sold every year in its global salerooms, from Argentina to Bermuda to Venezuela.This, unsurprisingly, creates a fair amount of work for the London lawyers and their three New York-based counterparts.

'Heritage and taxation issues, which in this line of work are considerable, are dealt with entirely by a team of two lawyers based in the same building - Edward Manisty and Anastasia Tennant - which frees us up to focus on other areas,' explains Mr Aydon.

This pair are separate from the legal team.Mr Aydon's team divides its work into three main categories.

The first - supporting the company's work on attracting business - involves work on various contracts of sale, and the larger the sale the more complicated the contract.For example, the company can occasionally offer a lending facility to a seller who has a piece coming up for auction soon and needs immediate liquidity, with the piece acting as security.The second area of work deals with the bread and butter issues of an in-house team, such as employment issues for Christie's staff worldwide, terms and conditions of business, and various intellectual property (IP) and copyright issues.'We have a team of in-house photographers at Christie's who photograph for our sale catalogues, meaning that we automatically own that copyright,' explains Ms Hall, who deals with most of the IP issues.

'However, problems do sometimes arise with the use of images by other parties, such as the media, or when we sell items of jewellery which another jeweller may claim are very similar to his own work.'Although items are not usually sold with copyright, an exception was made when Christie's masterminded the sale of an antique teddy bear along with its 'personality', which was used for various reproductions and a television series.However, it is the third area of work for the team - disputes - which tends to make the headlines in the art world.

Understandably keen to play down the extent of these controversies, Mr Aydon stresses the number of successful sales in comparison with the number of - admittedly well-publicised - problems.'In London alone we have over 100,000 lots passing through the salerooms every year, and so it's inevitable that there will be a few mishaps,' Mr Aydon explains, adding: 'We don't spend all our time fending off disputes and claims.'Complaints that do arise tend to be claims that a picture has been dated incorrectly, or that something is an outright forgery - both issues that obviously have huge financial implications for the potential sale.'The first thing to do in those situations is to try to establish whether it actually is a fake, and what the correct dating of the piece should be,' says Mr Wilson.

'This means involving experts, art historians, and even scientists who can sometimes X-ray paintings or use other dating methods.'If it turns out that the work is a forgery, the lawyers then have to determine whether a refund should be given - Christie's offers a money-back guarantee against forgery, subject to certain conditions - or whether compensation should be paid to the buyer.If the situation ends in litigation, something which Mr Aydon is again keen to stress rarely happens, then external lawyers will be brought in.

Firms which have been used in the past for litigation, or other issues 'which we can't deal with in-house, such as property work' include Stephenson Harwood, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, Bristows, and Watson Farley & Williams.One interesting area of dispute work is the restitution of art works looted by the Nazis during the occupation of Europe.

'Many of the works of art confiscated during the war were of a high value, and although many were returned after the war, inevitably some of them end up on the art market and however careful we may be, they sometimes pass through our salerooms,' says Mr Wilson.If a picture is spotted in a sale catalogue by a descendant who believes it may have been looted from his or her family, what follows is something of an artistic detective hunt.

'We have to trace the work's history - where it was sold and when - which involves going through books and journals trying to establish who owned it at what point,' says Mr Wilson.

'We have to look for any suspicious gaps in its history, or evidence of forced sales.'Although researchers are employed to help with this stage, it remains an exciting area of work for the lawyers.

'The legal team can really come into its own as a force for good, by helping to restore items to their rightful owners,' says Mr Wilson.

However, he adds that there is a 'moral as well as a legal dimension to this work', and 'there are sensitivities involved which you must remain conscious of'.Disputes aside, the other issue which has kept Christie's in the headlines for the past few months is the anti-trust case decided last month in New York, when former Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman was found guilty of conspiring with Christie's to eliminate competition between them by fixing the commissions paid by sellers.In what was a court case of soap opera proportions, the former chairman of Christie's, Sir Anthony Tennant, declined to travel to the US to face charges and cannot be extradited as the matter is a civil one in this country.

It is a subject, not surprisingly, which Christie's is loath to comment on, with Mr Aydon - who was involved in 'a certain number of issues to do with the case at this end' - saying merely that 'it is a chapter that we're pleased has come to an end'.Whether it is dramatic transatlantic court cases, identifying lost old masters or restoring looted works of art to their rightful owners, life at Christie's never seems to be dull.

However, the occupational hazard of working in such an environment, is the risk of a sudden, post-payday rush of blood to the head resulting in a rash - and pricey - purchase.

This is something which the team maintains has not happened so far - although who can deny that a Ming vase would look great as a pencil holder in their office?