Want to make history? A&O éminence grise Philip Wood CBE QC, author of The Fall of the Priests and the Rise of the Lawyers, gets in touch with news of a ‘bold and audacious’ project. A group of scholars is offering to archive records pertinent to lawyers or firms for the benefit of future generations.

The Legal Records at Risk scheme is being set up by the School of Advanced Study of the University of London, under the aegis of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. Clare Cowling, project director, says: ‘It is astonishing how interested future researchers are likely to be in what seem to us now to be routine materials.

‘It is also astonishing how much is not immunised by client confidentiality, such as law firm histories, anonymised statistics, publicly filed court documents, research projects, public legal events and so on.’  

So, if you were planning a spring clean of old records this year, think again – or at least get in touch with Clare Cowling: clare.cowling@sas.ac.uk.

 

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