After the controversey surrounding A&O’s international finance and projects associate Deidre Dare and her book Expat: A Weekly Serialized Novel About Living in Moscow , it seems as if the firm has had enough. According to The Lawyer Deidre Dare’s employment was terminated on Friday, several weeks after the firm stopped her from publishing further instalments of Expat. In a statement, a spokesman for the firm said:

"Following our normal disciplinary process, we found that Ms Dare’s behaviour – in publishing the material she did in the professional name under which she practises, and the way that she has responded to a number of reasonable requests from us since – was unacceptable and totally at odds with the standards of behaviour that we expect from all of our people.

"We’ve therefore terminated her employment.

"After we became formally aware of Ms Dare’s website and started to consider the firm’s response, she filed a grievance which was fully investigated in accordance with our standard policies and found to be groundless, although she has appealed against the decision."

Ms Dare’s brush with her employers has attracted much publicity for her online novel with interviews in the Times and lots of commentary in the blogosphere and in the national press. Will she be missed…? Or is there more to come?