The bad thing about being homeless, I'd assume, is that you have nowhere to live, every night, indefinitely. Sleeping rough as a one off – as Clifford Chance's London managing partner David Bickerton (pictured) did very publicly last week for charity – seems like something very different. Indeed, one may question the tastefulness of a millionaire spending the night on the street to raise money for homeless people...
Pursuing your dreams can come at a price. Deidre Dare (real name: Deidre Clark) used to earn over £130,000 a year as an associate in Allen & Overy's Moscow office. Then she started blogging, publishing erotic fiction that was heavily influenced by her experiences as an expat lawyer. She accompanied her prose with pictures and videos of herself in transparent nightwear. As the blog caught the media's attention, Fifty Shades of Grey-style literary success beckoned. But three years after being sacked by Allen & Overy for bringing the firm into disrepute with her sexy writing, life for Dare seems tough...
Ed note: This is the latest post in the 'If I knew then what I know now' series, where leading members of the legal profession share their wisdom with the next generation of wannabes.
If I knew then what I know now, I'd recognise that everybody makes mistakes but most lawyers pretend they don't. I was terrified of admitting that I didn't know what I was doing when I started out and I always thought that everybody knew more than me, writes Brecher managing partner Nicky Richmond as she recalls her days working at a big City law firm...
The email reproduced below, by a female associate departing from Clifford Chance's Washington DC office, was leaked to US blog Above the Law yesterday...
There's a list of the events taking place this week at ProBonoUK.
Earlier this week, a City lawyer told me that his firm had experienced a "surge" in unsolicited CVs and job-seeking emails from law graduates. He and his colleagues had received "far more than in previous years", he explained.
A quick call around other law firms confirmed that this surge is being felt across the City, with lawyers suggesting that it is linked to the current trend for graduates to take to the street and hustle for a job (as documented liberally in the Evening Standard of late).
Mark Herrmann, a senior in-house lawyer at multinational company Aon, has recently moved to London – and yesterday blogged about his shock at how much he’s being charged for his new flat in "by no means the best part of town".
The source of Herrmann's confusion – which has led him to fork out rent for a flat in a building he describes as "by no means the nicest" but is apparently valued at almost £2,000 per square foot – seems to be a chat he had with a fun-loving native when he was fresh off the plane. The joker told him: "Today, unless you have inherited wealth or bought your home long ago, most senior partners at London firms can’t afford to live anywhere near the City. Partner pay just won’t cover the cost."
Herrmann goes on to explain that what he's paying for his new gaff is "ten times what you’ll pay for great space in Chicago and something like three times what you’ll pay for nice space in New York."
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
