* A study finds that over 93 percent of attorneys, judges, and legal writing professors think the writing they’re reading is bad. One could argue this is evidence of a crisis in writing skills. Or one could argue that lawyers are a**holes who think every voice other than their own is wrong. It’s a 50/50…

Who are the latest partners to leave Dewey & LeBoeuf, and where are they going?

What does it mean when a British lawyer has the letters “QC” after his name? What are the advantages to being designated a “Queen’s Counsel”? And what are the disadvantages of the QC system?

It might have seemed impossible, but things have gotten worse for those involved in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. In addition to all the other evidence against the now defunct newspaper, which was run by James Murdoch, the son of everyone’s favorite terrifying Australian media baron, new email evidence — that investigators…

What happens when you put thirty American lawyers in a London pub where the drinks are free for the evening? Well, let’s just say it’s rather different to what happens when thirty British lawyers are assembled in equivalent conditions. The attendees at last week’s inaugural Benedict Arnold Society meeting for young and young-ish American lawyers…

A few months ago, one of the public relations staff at Linklaters invited me to have lunch with him in the firm’s canteen. Now, I know that if I was a client, or even a journalist of greater rank, my PR acquaintance would have probably deemed me worthy of a trip to a restaurant on…

“Privacy is for paedos,” announced tabloid journalist Paul McMullan, formerly of Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct British tabloid News of the World, while speaking last week at an enquiry set up in response to this summer’s phone hacking scandal. Firmly unapologetic for having harassed celebrities via an impressive range of mediums, McMullan continued: “Fundamentally, no one…

The Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Awards ceremony, held in London last Wednesday, was most notable for the contrast between the puppy-like excitement of the lawyer nominees and the auto-pilot professionalism of the host, FT editor Lionel Barber, whose aura was of a man who’d rather be at home watching TV. This was a shame, not…

Somehow, the UK’s legal system has avoided being dragged into a spiral of decline. Yes, they’re still good at law — so good, in fact, that London is the top destination in the world for international companies to settle disputes, and English law the most popular among international in-house counsel (40% use it, with just 14% opting for New York law). The question turns, then, to the UK’s ability to sustain this legal dominance….

Welcome to Letter from London, a weekly look at the U.K. legal world by our London correspondent, Alex Aldridge. He asked various managing partners what European debt contagion would mean for large law firms in the U.K. And, predictably, they reeled off the standard recession line about law firms being “well placed to handle the anticipated wave of restructuring work.” The worry is what happens after the restructuring is complete…