Inside & Outside the Law - Boom, Bust and Busted
Behind the London Olympics and the Paralympics are the legals. And the legals are not based on two page contracts downloaded from the internet.
The 2012 Games have produced a boom time for lawyers. There are two central Olympic bodies,, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), which is responsible for the construction of various Olympic sites and training facilities, as well as managing transport and facilities, and the mouthful London Organising Committee of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), which stages the Games and deals with commercial issues such as sponsorship.
ODA has a small internal legal team and an eye-watering £40m budget for external lawyers. But then on the contracting side alone, the overall legal team has handled 550 competitive tendering exercises, and has been involved in 2,500 contracts with 1,500 suppliers, of a total contract value of £6.5bn.
The LOCOG lead legal contribution has come from the City firm Freshfields, or rather Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to give it the full title. This exemplifies the international make-up of many of the big City legal firms – Freshfields is a merger product of British, German and Austrian firms, and as I explained in a recent talk to the City of London Guide Lecturers Association, some of these major firms will have more than 50% of their income coming from work outside the UK.
Freshfields can put up an impressive figure in the stats game – more than 300 lawyers from the firm have worked on issues concerning the Games.
All going well? Not at all – at the darker end of life in the law, one of Scotland’s best known firms ceased trading in April as a result of financial difficulties. Ross & Harper had been operating for more than 50 years, and high-profile lawyers including the former First Minister, Donald Dewar, had worked there over the years.
On the other hand, Ross & Harper had only 23 employees. Compare that with a firm having more than 1,000 employees, founded in 1909, headquartered in New York City and having 26 offices around the world including one in London. Enter Dewey LeBoeuf, who after a spell of gloomy press speculation went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York City, and UK administration, at the end of May.
Both of those forms of insolvency were designed to give struggling businesses a temporary respite from creditors and a chance to re-group. However, this was not to be the outcome for Dewey & LeBoeuf, whose UK administrator reported that there would be an “orderly wind-down of affairs”.
How are the mighty fallen. Corporately yes, but individually too. Take the sad case of Christopher Grierson, the former partner of City firm Hogan Lovells, who was jailed on 30 May for defrauding his firm of £1.27m of travel expenses. Sad case, as Grierson had been painted in proceedings as a manic depressive who sought refuge in his work, the one part of his life where he was a success (and who to be fair to his firm apparently brushed off concerns expressed about the state of his health).
Finally, one might wonder about the state of mind of US lawyer Leonard Sawyer, who spiced up a Continental Airlines flight in February 2011. In Part 1 of his exploits he reportedly raised his tray table to display his erect genitalia to a woman passenger sitting next to him, and in Part 2 he emerged from one of the firm’s toilets in a similar state.
Sawyer pleaded guilty to two counts of having undertaken lewd, indecent or obscene acts, and will be sentenced in August. It has also been suggested that he will not for much longer be an active member of the Californian Bar.....
The author is a City of London, City of Westminster and National Trust guide, and former law firm partner, who leads walking tours in the City and in Westminster. See tabs for details.