The Legal Diary has moved to https://www.thelegaldiary.co.uk/
Friday 6 May 2022
Diary news, commentary, insights, appointments and arts from the legal world
SHORT THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
‘Enablers’ – The New Dirty Word

An article by Christian Larson, a White Collar Defense and Investigations lawyer at Cadwalader, published last night in the firm’s ‘Cabinet News and Views’ brought home how much the weight of the US law is now being brought to bear on the Russian kleptocrats. Amongst other things Larson highlighted that “President Biden’s proposal[s] would create a new criminal offense, prohibiting the knowing or intentional possession of ‘proceeds directly obtained from corrupt dealings with the Russian government’ and that ‘the DOJ [would be afforded] additional time to work with international partners to build complex cases and “identify assets for seizure and forfeitures.”’
The sting in the tail is the forfeitures. They are expected to be massive. “The legislative proposals signal that the administration is preparing for a potentially high volume of administrative, civil, and criminal action against Russian elites who violate the U.S. law, and those who enable them. Regardless of the course of the conflict in Ukraine, the legal fallout is sure to extend for years to come.”
It is significant then that anti-Putin campaigner Bill Browder, author of Freezing Order and Red Notice, complained bitterly on the BBC’s Newsnight this week, that the biggest ‘enablers’ for the Russian oligarchs were London lawyers – and that, unlike accountants, they are being allowed to continue to act for their Russian clients. Looks like they will have no shortage of work.
The LegalDiarist
NOTE: We will NOT be publishing next Friday. We are switching our format to a website and will re-appear in a fortnight’s time. The usual alerts will be despatched.
In this week’s edition
+ LEGAL DIARY OF THE WEEK
– It’s All in the Mind (We think)…at Farrer & Co
– O No, Not Another Bright Idea…….at Browne Jacobson
– Untying the Knots…..at Boodle Hatfield
– Go West to Wilshire…….at Clarke Willmot
+ LEGAL COMMENT OF THE WEEK on Long Covid and Industrial Injury
+ THE SPLIT: FURTHER LEGAL ANALYSIS
+LEGAL APPOINTMENTS OF THE WEEK at Clifford Chance, Volterra Fietta, McCarthy Denning and Thomson Snell & Passmore
LEGAL DIARY OF THE WEEK
It’s All in the Mind (We think)

Unless you are too stressed to notice you’ll know that next week is Mental Health Awareness Week. One firm marking the event is Farrer & Co. which will be ‘unveiling’ (so to speak) its team of Mental Health First Aiders – all thirty six of them – who are ‘ready and able’ to offer a first line of support to colleagues with mental health concerns ranging from impostor syndrome to post-natal depression. Guest speaker at the event will be mental health expert Josh Connelly, reflecting on Loneliness,
As Rachel Lewis, partner and Board Member at Farrer & Co, said, “Our agile working framework, which gives employees more choice about working from home or the office to better suit their needs and those of our clients, has provided a useful platform for a more mindful approach. We want everyone to bring their whole selves to work, and being able to talk openly about mental health is a big part of that. Thanks to our Mental Health First Aiders, we are now even better placed to start up these important conversations.”
Bringing one’s ‘whole self’ to work is a popular mantra. However WFH means that you cannot escape your ‘home worries’ nor, indeed, your loneliness – so even more reason to have access to counselling. As Sarah Green, one of the firm’s newly trained Mental Health First Aiders, commented,“I know how easily worrying or anxious thoughts can escalate if not aired. I also know the incredible relief and peace of mind that talking through these problems can bring.”
O No, Not Another Bright Idea
Browne Jacobson seems to be setting the pace when it comes to right-on progressive initiatives. Not a week passes, it seems, without another one being announced. This time round they are the first law firm to link up with something called ‘O Shaped’.
Now, without being too cynical, O Shaped comes across as a bit New Agey with its ‘Five Os Mindset’ and ‘12 O Shaped Attributes’. Firms go, apparently, on an O Shaped journey (coming back to where they started from?) and become part of the O Shaped network. The whole thing is the brainchild of Dan Kayne, a former Network Rail General Counsel, who set up the organisation in 2019 after delivering a ‘thought provoking and engaging speech at a GC conference on how private practice and in-house teams could work more collaboratively as one team when advising their business clients’.
According to Browne Jacobson Managing Partner, Richard Medd,“It made sense that we … join O Shaped’s campaign to make the legal profession a more connected, engaged and inclusive environment.” Medd added that, “This relationship will have a positive impact on the way we work together, the way we work with our clients and the way we work with the wider legal community in the future.”
O Shaped is, already partnering with three ‘leading law schools’ so be prepared to hear a lot more about it. “There’s no such thing as soft skills, just hard skills and human skills,” announces SImon Sinek, the author and TED talker, on its website https://www.oshapedlawyer.com/ So you know what you are in for.
Untying the Knots

Boodle Hatfield is one of a very small group of law firms with 300 years of history behind it. To mark the anniversary it will be convening next week a panel discussion on ‘300 years of Family Life – Past Present & Future’ which brings a clutch of celebrities including TV presenter Anna Richardson, musician and writer Tom Rasmussen, evolutionary anthropologist Dr Anna Machin and relationship psychotherapist Silva Neves. Collectively they will to mull over how attitudes and expectations of ‘marriage, relationships and love’ have changed since the early eighteenth century. Now it could be said that change was slow on the marriage front over the centuries but that some of the most significant changes have happened in just the past three decades. ‘Are we finally approaching the end of the reign of the nuclear family and entering a new era of polyamory, platonic parenting and communal living?” asks partner Emily Brand. “Now that we can scientifically prove who our biological fathers are and women can financially support themselves, why do people marry, particularly when the solemn ties of marriage can be dissolved simply by ticking a box in an online applications form?” Good question – although there are also plenty of good answers. As, no doubt, the audience will hear.
Go West to Wiltshire (er, no – Wilshire)

It is a long way from Somerset to Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles but to their great credit lawyers at Clarke Willmott seem to have taken it in their stride while acting for super cool Wasserman Music (office address 10900 Wilshire) on its acquisition of a controlling stake in Paradigm UK’s live music business.
What’s more the South West’s finest (that’s Bristol not South by Southwest) does not even claim on its website to have a media or entertainment offer to its clients. Top of the list of its specialisms is, not surprisingly, Agriculture. So this whole story has a kind of Local Hero feel to it.
Just as a reminder, Wasserman represents some of the world’s leading pop, rock, electronic and hip hop artists and runs from Baby Keem, Bastille, Billie Eilish, through to Sturgill Simpson, SZA, Turnstile, Wet Leg and Zedd (among many others,as the publicity points out). Meanwhile Paradigm’s list includes FKA twigs, Lewis Capaldi, Liam Payne, Mark Ronson, My Chemical Romance, PinkPantheress, Rag’n’Bone Man, Rita Ora.
“Bristol-based corporate partner Rob Ridd led on the deal for Clarke Willmott alongside Tim Copplestone, an employment lawyer in the firm, supported by Cormac Hayes and a full team of other specialist lawyers,” ran the announcement. Meanwhile another West Country-based firm – Osborne Clarke – was also involved. London look out.
LEGAL COMMENT OF THE WEEK
TOPIC: Long COVID: Could it amount to a disability?
COMMENT BY: Aleksandra Traczyk, Winckworth Sherwood
“The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has suggested that organisations should treat their employees who have long COVID symptoms as if they have a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. So can Long COVID amount to a disability?
“Under the Equality Act 2010, a disability is a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. ‘Long-term’ means that the impairment has lasted or is expected to last for at least 12 months or more, at the time of the alleged acts of discrimination committed. ‘Substantial’ means more than minor or trivial.
“The ONS has defined “long COVID”, as symptoms persisting for “more than four weeks” after COVID-19 is first suspected. This would not be long enough for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, unless the symptoms were expected to last for at least 12 months or more.
“In cases where long COVID has lasted for at least a year, as it has in a large number of self-reported cases, the long-term test of the Equality Act 2010 would be met and in cases where the symptoms have continued for a few months and look likely to continue, this equally would appear to be met.
“Although some campaign groups and bodies – including the Trade Union Congress – have called for long COVID to be recognised as a disability under the Equality Act 2010, this has not yet happened. ECHR has acknowledged that the short amount of time that long COVID has been in existence as a condition, and the fluctuating nature of symptoms, may be a barrier to the government doing so.
“For now, ACAS has stated that rather than trying to work out if an employee’s condition is a disability, the employer should focus instead on what reasonable adjustments they can make. Long COVID has been found to affect older people, ethnic minorities and women more severely. Employers therefore should be aware that those groups could bring an indirect discrimination claim based on age, race or sex, where they have been subjected to a detriment because of their long COVID, even when their long COVID does not amount to a disability. It is therefore vital that employers approach any long COVID cases amongst their workforce with caution in order to try to avoid the risk of any allegations of possible discrimination being raised.”
TOPIC: The serious industrial injury to the arm of Keith Matheson, a contractor’, when a circular saw caught his fleece and pulled his arm into the machine.
COMMENT BY: Susanne McGraw, Head of Personal Injury at Watermans,the Scottish PI firm
“Whether you work in an office, a restaurant, a factory, a sports centre, or on the road, undesired accidents can take place when you least expect them. In Scotland alone, workers suffer 41,000 non-fatal injuries every year.
“Unfortunately, this suggests that accidents in the workplace are frequent, and in most situations, they happen through no fault of your own. Sometimes, work-related injuries can be very serious and life-changing, and the upsetting and traumatic experience can leave you scarred for quite some time. This is why it is always important to have somebody on your side to support you while you focus on regaining your physical and mental well-being.”
In other words, make sure that you get a lawyer fast.
+ THE SPLIT: FURTHER LEGAL ANALYSIS
In her second article on the legal questions prompted by the recent TV series THE SPLIT Jayne Martins, a Partner in the family team at RWK Goodman, examines the obligations on a lawyer when she knows more about the facts of the matter than her client.

In this second instalment on my observations of Series 3 of The Split, I take a look at the plausibility of one of the key subplots which involved a single-sex married couple, Bella and Sian, and their friend Gus. The three of them meet with the show’s protagonist Hannah Stern, a partner at the fictional firm Noble Hale Defoe, to arrange a parental agreement as Bella and Sian are having a baby with the assistance of Gus’s sperm donation. The law in England and Wales says that where a couple are married and conception occurs via artificial insemination (as was understood to be the case), the donor (ie Gus) would have no legal rights at all as a parent. So in real life the meeting was superfluous as the agreement was unnecessary.
Without the meeting, intuitive Hannah (and viewers) would never have spotted the nervous smiles between Bella and Gus which soon gave the game away that the insemination had been less artificial and more of the natural kind. Hannah then faced a dilemma; she could not advise Bella and Sian to sign the document as she knew the information to be false but she also knew that if the truth was revealed, it might end her clients’ marriage. In reality, Hannah would have had to advise her clients that she could not assist them any further as Hannah has a duty not to mislead the court so she cannot have any involvement in finalising a document she knows to contain false information. A reputable family lawyer would have recommended that Gus get his own legal advice as he would be considered the legal parent of the child and have various responsibilities towards the child that he may not have anticipated (including paying child maintenance). Instead, Hannah advised Gus and Bella to come clean and disastrous consequences inevitably ensued.
While Series 3 of The Split did contain some other far-fetched legal scenarios, it was somewhat of a relief that the final season focused much more heavily on the personal lives of the main characters (mostly the separation and divorce of Hannah Stern and her husband which was covered in my first instalment) and much less on the work of the family lawyers at Noble Hale Defoe. As a family lawyer myself this allowed me to enjoy the show as opposed to wanting to throw certain objects at my TV as was the case in the previous two seasons where glaring legal discrepancies occurred in almost every episode!
APPOINTMENTS OF THE WEEK
(As we are not publishing next week there is a double dose!!)
Marc Besen has been appointed as Global Co-Chair of Clifford Chance‘s Antitrust practice. He assumes the position from Brussels-based partner Thomas Vinje and will join Washington, DC-based partner Sharis Pozen in leading more than 170 attorneys practicing antitrust law in 18 locations globally.

Besen currently leads the firm’s German Antitrust practice. “Competition law considerations continue to impact the way our clients approach risk and growth opportunities,” he says. “This is as true locally as it is across jurisdictions. I am excited to [take on] this role as we connect our global network to navigate clients through their challenges.”
Sharis Pozen commented,”Marc has an extraordinary reputation handling numerous high profile global merger reviews and investigations before the European Commission and national antitrust authorities,” said “In a market facing ever-increasing regulation and scrutiny, he brings significant experience in supporting international clients on antitrust compliance.”

Tina Williams has joined City law firm McCarthy Denning as a Partner in the firm’s corporate group. She was previously at Fox Williams, where she was a founding partner and built the firm into one of the UK’s leading partnership law practices. She is widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading lights on partnership law and has advised on some of the most significant domestic and international law firm and other partnership mergers.
McCarthy Denning is reckoned to be one of the first ‘Next Generation’ City law firms operating on the basis of a flat structure (in contrast to the pyramid model adopted by almost all large corporate firms).The firm has a high-tech approach at its core to provide greater efficiency through flexible working and itrecruits exclusively highly experienced lawyers such as Williams (both partners and associates) selecting only those with the appropriate pedigree and credentials. .
“Tina is without doubt one of the UK’s leading partnership law practitioners,” said Warren Wooldridge, CEO of McCarthy Denning, “This is a highly significant addition for McCarthy Denning as we build our profile and client base across professional and financial services partnerships. She also brings vast experience as a law firm leader and will contribute much to further development of our firm.”
Gunjan Sharma has been appointed as Partner by Volterra Fietta, the public international law firm. He joined the firm as an associate in 2018 and was promoted to Counsel in 2021. Previously he had worked for eight years in the international arbitration and litigation group of a major global law firm in New York.

Volterra Fietta was founded just over a decade ago and is regarded as the world’s first dedicated public international law firm. It is now ranked in the top tier in the legal directories.Whilst at Volterra Fietta, Sharma has led teams representing governments and global businesses in a number of high profile disputes including the first investor-State arbitration against the French Republic (featuring a gold mine expropriation claim in KN Holding LLC & Severgroup LLC v the French Republic); and representing Egypt in a case related to Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera Media Network v Arab Republic of Egypt).
“Our decision to invite Gunjan to join us was easy,” said Robert Volterra. “ Gunjan’s talent, drive, initiative, intelligence and the respect he enjoys from his colleagues all made the case for him. Gunjan relentlessly pursues our clients’ interests and guides them to optimal outcomes, as their trusted adviser.”
Jonathan Askin has joined Kent-based firm Thomson Snell & Passmore as a Partner to head up its commercial law activities. Askin was previously at Knights plc, where he led the commercial team.

In the run-up to Brexit, Askin’s work in relation to cross-border outsourcing and trade of goods whilst holding the position of National Head of Commercial Law for international insurance law firm BLM led to him him being named Lawyer Monthly’s ‘Commercial Lawyer of the Year 2019’ Among a variety of recent mandates he advised a US Fortune 500 company on its multi-million agreement with the Department of Health during lockdown to ensure PPE was available to the NHS.
“Jonathan’s wealth of experience and genuine understanding of the wider business and commercial needs of our clients will further strengthen our offering,“ said Joanne Gallagher, Partner and Head of Corporate & Commercial at Thomson Snell & Passmore. “We have ambitious growth plans for the department and Jonathan’s appointment is a key step [towards] deepening and expanding the range of specialist services we deliver for clients.”
E-VENTS
PINSENT MASONS Developing green AI – Who owns the IP and how do I keep control of my data? MAY 19 ![]() |
We would like to invite you to our next webinar on Developing green AI – Who owns the IP and how do I keep control of my data? AI can enable and accelerate a business’s climate change and sustainability goals. It is key to understand the intellectual property rights that will arise in the AI tool and its outputs and who will own these rights to ensure return on investment and freedom to use and commercialise. AI development will also require a business to disclose datasets to the developer, which must be carefully managed throughout the development project to avoid lasting damage to the business’s IP and data assets. In this webinar we will highlight the IP and data issues that commonly arise in AI development and deployment and explain the legal, practical and technical solutions available. Please note that this invitation is unique to Edward Fennell. If you know someone else who would like to attend, please forward this invite and ask them to register here. |
Developing green AI – Who owns the IP and how do I keep control of my data? 19 May 2022 13:00 – 14:00 BST Webinar |
Speakers Cerys Wyn Davies, Partner Mark Marfé, Legal Director Bella Phillips, Solicitor |
For further information please contact:# Lesley White Event Executive+44 141 567 8659 lesley.white@pinsentmasons.com |