Whispa
Cadbury World, the chocolate-theme park linked to the famous factory, is adding an exciting new zone to the magical Cadabra ride. Called “Share Box” it features smiley faced chocolate replicas of Slaughter and May partners advising Roger Carr, the Cadbury chairman, on the greatest Sell Out in confectionary history.
Decline and fall
Amid all this talk of hedgies spending more time with their BlackBerrys in Zurich, one wonders where the top lawyers with an eye to the future might be heading.
Actually it’s already clear that, like the Imperial migration from Rome to Constantinople, there is a definite movement to the East. In what could be an epochal change, Shanghai and Singapore are increasingly where the top lawyers are found.
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Denys Hickey, a partner with Ince & Co in London since 1986, is off to the firm’s Singapore office. Hickey is a heavy-hitter with an immense weight of contacts and experience to bring to the firm’s energy, offshore and international trading business.
Meanwhile, one of the City’s top legal marketers is also packing his bags for Singapore. And when the prime PR people start to move, you know that something serious is happening.
All at sea?
Someone who is already ahead of the game in relation to Lord Justice Jackson’s proposals is Dan Tench, a partner at Olswang.
One of the keys to the success of the new Jackson regime (assuming that it comes off) is the ability to predict costs accurately — a skill that has been as elusive to the legal community as working out longitude was to the navigators of the 18th century. However, Tench believes that he has cracked it through bespoke software called Feesability, which he is now considering commercialising with Andy Ellis, of Ellis Grant, the costs consultant.
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Apparently, Feesability prepares a detailed estimate of litigation by breaking down a matter into component tasks.
It sounds seductive and was cooked up after the Woolf reforms. Interest in cost estimating, however, quickly fizzled so Tench shelved it. But now, like a pop record that gets to No 1 on its rerelease, Feesability might just be one of those products that hits the spot. I hope that Tench’s partners don’t get too jealous.
Collared
Meanwhile, Mishcon de Reya is venturing abroad for the first time with an office in New York headed by Jim McGuire, a highly experienced American lawyer. McGuire has “a proven track record in building and growing New York practices” and will focus the firm on white-collar crime, a sector that flourishes reassuringly when times are hard. This is one kind of NY-LON synergy that certainly makes sense.