Members of big London law firms work hard and play harder. But who is the sober-suited lawyer who enjoys cross-dressing, has a fetish for latex and asks to have Jackanory stories read at bedtime? Who is the lady lawyer who likes listening to Enid Blyton while wearing rubber trousers?
Legal Business, the magazine for City lawyers, keeps a close ear to the ground on who is doing what to whom and where, be it office desk, marital bed or nightclub toilet. As in previous years, it this week publishes its annual Christmas quiz asking readers to identify the participants in specific acts of legal debauchery.
No answers are ever published. The magazine, like its 25,000 readers, knows all about client confidentiality. The object of the game is that those who are unnamed are none the less shamed.
“It’s a case of be good or be published,” Jim Baxter, editor of Legal Business, said yesterday. “As ever, the answers will remain under lock and key, while those involved must live with their degradation in private turmoil or quiet pride.”
Many of the sexual miscreants are assumed to work for the so-called “magic circle”, London’s top five law firms: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters and Slaughter and May. It will be a relief to the Queen that her own lawyers, Farrer and Co, are not included.
Mr Baxter said the quiz brought the murkier end of the legal profession to light.
“The stories are definitely true and we have cleared them with our lawyers. The quiz has been going for more than a decade and is libel-free to date. Answers and never revealed, but speculation is encouraged.”
Lawyers were highly stressed and spent a lot of time in the company of colleagues and clients instead of at home, so there was more opportunity for misbehaviour, Mr Baxter said.
In the interests of embarrassment, Times Online is pleased to reproduce the full list of questions:
1. Which Scottish law firm partner surprised an assistant by confessing he enjoys cross-dressing and has a fetish for latex before asking if she wouldn’t mind reading him Jackanory stories one evening?
2. Which former head of a magic circle Moscow office was once asked to negotiate a rent review on the office building two years early at gunpoint?
3. Which magic circle partner had his partnership delayed by a year after being caught having sex with a client?
You get the picture?
