At Westminster,among Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, the name Elizabeth Wilmshurst has become something of a byword for principle and pluck. Ms Wilmshurst was the lawyer who defied her political masters at the Foreign Office and told them they would violate international law if they joined the American invasion of Iraq. Her political masters ignored […]

Sullivan & Cromwell has stayed in pole position at the top of the US M&A tables for the first half of 2004, with corporate stalwarts Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and Cravath Swaine & Moore both surging up the table. Sullivan kept the top place, which it secured in the first quarter, by advising on

After deliberating for several months over a fitting punishment for lawyer Gary Neinstein, a disciplinary panel of the Law Society of Upper Canada decided the 62-year-old man must be stripped of his right to practise law for sexually harassing two women in the mid-1990s. Mr. Neinstein, a well-known lawyer in the personal injury field, filed

The army of lawyers swarming around Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which touched off a collapse in its stock price after it admitted inflating proved reserves, has been joined by a new, veteran member. Securities lawyer William Lerach, famed for playing a lead role in many of the biggest shareholder class action suits of the past two

“Tesco law” came a step closer when Britain’s biggest supermarket chain launched its own online legal service. As well as a cheap service for will writing and storage, already available from other sources, Tesco Legal Store offers Do-It-Yourself divorce kits for £7.49 that can end a marriage without the need for a solicitor. Other services

Berwin Leighton Paisner walked away with the prestigious, Law Firm of the Year award but the biggest cheer of the evening went to the winners of the Public Sector Team of the Year Award: the Hutton Inquiry team. It was that inquiry which had “ruined the summer” of the host for the evening, Tony Blair’s

Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe is in talks to take on the bulk of Clifford Chance’s West Coast securities litigation practice as the magic circle giant continues to overhaul its troubled US practice. The proposed deal would see nine partners from Clifford Chance’s San Francisco branch transfer to Orrick and leave Clifford Chance with only a

Brandon Villery, 29, a four-year associate at Morrison & Foerster, uses an impressive collection of legal resources, but it’s got nothing to do with the Code of Civil Procedure. It’s also a bit more interesting: Playstation, X-Box and Game Boy Advance, otherwise known as video games. One recent afternoon, Villery gathered in the conference room

The former wife of a wealthy lawyer told a court she could not believe he would have made a will leaving nothing of his multimillion-pound estate to herself or her children. Gloria Sherrington was giving evidence yesterday in the High Court during a case that aims to have the will that left everything to Richard

Survey reveals that a large number of senior lawyers believe that firms manipulate published profit figures Leading lawyers believe that law firms often massage their financial performance figures, according to a poll that shows that nearly 40% of partners think firms routinely inflate published profit figures. In the latest Legal Week/ EJ Legal Big Question