It’s not just the bankers getting hit by a nasty Christmas surprise. Accountants and law firms are fielding criticism as details emerge of the fees they’ve generated from collapsing businesses. And Hedge funds are also getting it in the neck. They’ve received much abuse through the financial crisis – even collapsing banks got in on the act complaining about hedge fund’s shorting their stock: “When I find a short-seller, I want to tear his heart out and eat it before …

There has been a lot of flirting amongst the top 100 law firms this year. Even if hasn’t led to much action.

Pretty much everything has been overshadowed this week by the PBR and the poor persecuted bankers.

We don’t believe that the UK plans for supercasinos were sunk by the idea that that the rich needed to be protected from themselves but given the financial crisis, maybe there’s something in it. And for the anti-supercasino crowd this case will be grist to the mill.

Imagine spending 20 years building up the family business to a size where it could be sold for nine figures. The sort of feat that probably requires some self control and more than …

"Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." So it went.

Or not so tough perhaps. TV’s, Playstations, ready access to home comforts, all part of the modern prison system. And it may not be such a bad thing if it helps to rehabilitate some of our burgeoning prison population.

But there should probably be some limits to this liberal approach to imprisonment. The Sun reports prison guards at Verne Prison in Portland, Dorset unwittingly allowed convicted drug dealer, Mohamed …

Less diamonds and caviar in Moscow these days.

CMS Moscow has laid off 30 employees with 10 lawyers amongst the leavers. The office was made up via a merger of the local offices of CMS Cameron McKenna French and German alliance firms earlier this year but has since seen a number of redundancies.

Russia, which is heavily reliant on oil exports, has been hit by the sharp fall in energy prices. President Dmitry Medvedev predicted a 7.5% decline in GDP for 2009. …

BPP has received some unwanted attention recently. First came the news in September that BPP had requested volunteers to leave its Bar Vocational Course (BVC) and take up places next year with a £2,000 incentive. Then reports emerged that Apollo Global, the American company that bought BPP for £303m earlier this year, is under investigation in the US over alleged accounting irregularities. Whilst the latter issue has little to do with BPP itself, it being a UK registered …

First Bruno pushed the boundaries of taste and humour. Now it might squeeze the boundaries of Sacha Baron Cohen’s wallet if this lawsuit gets anywhere. The Mail reports that:

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is being sued for £70million in libel damages over his film Bruno.

Ayman Abu Aita, a Palestinian grocer and peace activist from Bethlehem, says the depiction of him in the movie has ruined his life.

In Bruno, Cohen’s gay character claims to travel to the Ein El-Hilweh refugee camp …

The City has had a feast of fees following the banking crisis.

Slaughter and May is expected to receive a total of £32.9m for legal advice between September 2007 to next March, dwarfing any other law firm on this front. Elsewhere, £32.6m was shared between PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and BDO Stoy Harward. And Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were on the payrole for financial advice.

In total the Treasury has paid …

Taylor Wessing joins a number of firms that have posted drops in revenue for the first half of the financial year.

The firm generated total fee income of £77m in the first six months of the year compared with around £90m for the same period in 2008-09.

More results:

Camerons and Ashurst see double digit revenue falls
Addleshaws, Nabarro, Halliwells post significant declines
Linklaters Loses its Lustre

Anyone complaining about how difficult it is to get a training contract might feel a little humbled by this story. Yesterday the Mail reported that Matt King, 22, succeeded in winning a training contract against considerable odds after he was permanently paralysed playing rugby. The accident happened when he was 17, in the opening minute of his first professional game for the London Broncos Academy team.

Five years on, Matt has graduated from Hertfordshire University with a first-class law degree …

Whilst it might not stack up much compared to these guys, it’s still pretty solid given the events of last year.

Slides Top Earners

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According to Legal Week , accounts filed with Companies House last week show that Linklaters’ highest-paid partner took home £2.5m in the 2008-09 financial year. It is nearly £1m less than the highest earner last year but whoever it is shouldn’t be complaining.

Linklaters generated revenues of £1.298bn representing a 0.4% increase on …

There are various ways lawyers have found to rip-off their clients but this one has a particularly neat simplicity to it.

Trevor Hobden, 47, was struck off after the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal heard that he charged clients by the weight of their files. And it’s not like he even used a set of scales in the process. Asked by investigators how he calculated fees Hobden said: ‘When you cost a file you put …

It is clear now (it took a couple of decades) that women are equally able when it comes to doing the top jobs in the legal profession. Much has been made in recent years of gender equality and much has been done – 20% of partners in the top 100 are now female.  So the stats are improving even if they have some way to go – the Magic Circle proved less inclusive on the ‘equality scale ’ than …

With the credit crunch came the tax-dodger crackdown. The US pursuit of its citizens hiding cash in Switzerland made headlines as one of the country’s biggest banks caved to pressure and breached the its banking secrecy laws. UBS handed over the names and account details of about 4,450 of its clients to US tax authorities as part of a settlement. These people will pay billions of dollars in back taxes, penalties and interest and many others have since come …

Bringing some added beauty to the bar – the underdog beautician who kicked some legal behinds…

When Georgina Blackwell, a 23 year old Essex beautician saw off a team of barristers in court, she might just have kickstarted a promising legal career for herself. Lined up against a legal team representing Bellway Homes, she managed to overturn a previous High Court judgment and in the process win her mother £75,000 compensation.

And on the back of that she has won a …

Further evidence of a tough first half…

CMS Cameron McKenna posted a 13% decrease in half-year revenues, with fee income falling to £95.3m for the first half of the 2009-10 financial year.

Ashurst, meanwhile has seen revenues fall by 14% for the first half of the financial year to £136m for the period ending 31 October. Last year Ashurst posted £158m in the same period.

More Results

Addleshaws, Nabarro, Halliwells post significant declines
Linklaters Loses its Lustre
Stephenson Harwood on the up

With difficulty. As with most things the easy answer for successive governments has been to increase tax but continual increases don’t seem to prevent our towns and cities being kebab strewn and awash with puke every Sunday.

In a bid to alleviate some of the booze culture north of the border, Scottish ministers have been campaigning for minimum pricing of alcohol. Dr Brian Keighley, chairman of the British Medical Association in Scotland has described Scotland’s alcohol consumption rates as “staggering ” …

Last week Roll on Friday reported that a Freshfields’ associate collapsed and was subsequently hospitalised after falling down some stairs at home. The incident apparently followed a massive slog at the office – according to the report she racked up several all nighters in the previous month and put in between 300 and 400 recorded hours at the grindstone.

Although the precise details leading up to the incident were unconfirmed, it has now emerged that a partner at Freshfields is …

Top 20 firm Addleshaw Goddard has reported a significant drop in half-year turnover. Revenues at the half-year point fell 14% from £94.7m last year to £81.3m this year.

Meanwhile, top 25 firm Nabarro has reported an even steeper drop for the first half with an 18% decrease in turnover to £52.3m compared to £64m for the first half of the last financial year.

And Halliwells which resides in the top 40, falls between the two with a 15% drop in turnover for …