Charles Proctor

Charles Proctor thinks we're all missing something obvious in the currency row in the Scots independence debate: "Who owns Sterling anyway?" he asks. The Fladgate partner and currency law expert tells me the answer is not as straightforward as it looks. With just hours to go before the independence vote, the posturing continues on both sides of the border: the Scots have been "asserting their legal right" to continue to use Sterling, ("it's our pound and we're keeping it!"). But all three major Westminster parties have been promising to block a formal currency union. So whose currency is it?

Both the FT's Alphaville section and The Times' Law pages have been grateful for Charles' wisdom on this point: "Cash is just an asset for the person who holds it, not for the central bank that issues it. The Sterling monetary system is simply a medium of exchange - inextricably linked with the Bank of England which manages and oversees the currency. If we get a Yes vote on Thursday, the Central Bank and other national institutions of course remain exclusively with the remainder of the United Kingdom. At the same time, Scotland has no intrinsic right to a "share" of the pound, despite the rhetoric coming from Holyrood." So I'm not sure I'm any clearer (but perhaps that's the point): who owns Sterling?? Charles tells me no-one does, but I’m not so sure! I've had this experience in conversation with banking lawyers before; looking too deeply at the legal concepts around money lends an odd perspective, taking hard-nosed practical lawyers into a philosophical, abstract and alien world.  Although this new perspective about money soon reaches vanishing point when I'm back on the high street buying shoes... Charles tells me this is the whole point – money is my purchasing asset because it is the Bank of England’s liability --- ah, so that’s it!

"In the event of a Yes vote", Charles continues, "international law requires the two sides to negotiate an equitable division of assets and liabilities". So like a divorce then? O dear, we all know how that goes...  

Charles not only has a busy practice advising the City's leading banks as part of the Fladgate Banking & Finance Team, but he is also a prolific author (for Butterworths, Sweet & Maxwell, Oxford University Press, etc), his titles including The Legal Aspect of Money, The Law and Practice of International Banking, Payment Obligations in Commercial & Financial Transactions, The Euro and the Financial Markets - The Legal Impact of EMU and International Payment Obligations - A Legal Perspective - so he clearly knows a thing or two about this subject. He has a new book coming out later this year which I can't say anything about just yet, but I'm hoping to get an invite to the book launch so watch this space... He also points out that any decision on the Scots currency after a Yes vote will have knock-on effects for the newly independent country's EU membership. "Sterlingisation would in fact be inconsistent with Scotland's application for EU membership because accession arrangements now commit incoming members to join the Euro at some point."

We will all be watching how Thursdays vote go with close interest. But it's what happens afterwards that could be even more interesting. 

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Walking back from Sky News' Westminster studio I stumbled across the Fields of Battle : Lands of Peace 1418 outdoor exhibition in St James's Park.  Billed as an engaging street exhibition it really does stop you in your tracks. It certainly did me, as I took a little detour and 15 minutes time out on my way back to the office.  Very moving.  It features the work of award-winning photo journalist Mike St Maur Shiel and juxtaposes World War I landscapes then and now to mark the centenary of The Great War.  It moves shortly to the Royal Albert Hall to provide a visual accompaniment to a musical performance of Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man at the end of this month (Sunday 28 September).  If you haven't caught the exhibition yet, you might be able to catch up with it then.

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Those of you who know me well will be familiar with my passion for stories - also at the moment for all things Cornwall-related.  So you will understand my delight in meeting a new Covent Garden neighbour who has just set up shop selling an exotic version of the classic Cornish pasty, with a fabulous fable served on the side.  The Jamaica Patty Co makes Cornish pasties with a tastebud-tantalising West Indian twist.  And the tale to match is about the recipe for the Cornish classic morphing as it migrated to the Caribbean when Jamaican sailors took them home from English ports and their women then substituted indigenous Caribbean ingredients over time.  Of course I had to try one.  Yum! Now we just need @Lawyer_Eats to review them formally for us.  Over to you Nicky...

Su Anderson

Not everything is as it seems...

Ever wondered the extent to which our history has been photoshopped? How big the element of Spin?  Photo journalist Su Anderson has been opening my eyes to the impacts and ethics of photo manipulation, its potential to distort the truth and the rules that photo journalists live by.


I met Su on Twitter, intrigued by an article she had posted on the ethics of image manipulation in the press and how history as depicted to us (both in words and pictures) is not always the immutable truth we believe it to be. “Growing up in the US I was taught that Word War II began in 1942.  It was only when I moved to the UK in 2009 that I realised this was just a national point of view!”  I made contact with her IRL to find out more. In conversation I discovered this is a subject very close to her heart, ever since studying it at Syracuse University as part of her degree in photojournalism and cultural anthropology.  When she moved to the UK her first job was as a Forensic and PR Photographer for the Scottish Police Services Authority, where she ran the picture desk for the entire police force, providing a forensic photography service as well as press photos for the force.  She, more than most, knows the co-ordinates of that line between truth and presentation of facts.

“Photo manipulation is clearly dangerous because of its potential to mislead.  For example to put a political leader in a better light, or to remove someone from a group shot when allegiances change.  Who could forget the cringe-worthy episode of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, found out in 2010 for doctoring a photo to present himself at the front of the red carpet procession of world leaders at the Middle East Peace Talks.  In truth he was out of favour and had been relegated to the back.  The photoshopping was so poor though, his ruse was quickly rumbled.  And of course, being exposed by a blogger (Egyptian Wael Khalil) meant the reaction in cyberspace was vivid.  Spoof versions of the photo manipulation went viral: Mubarak winning the World Cup; breaking the 100 meters World Record; and landing on the moon; to mention just a few.”

But the doctoring of images isn’t just a problem of the digital age.  It has a long case history as Su’s article demonstrates.  “History is rife with photo manipulation long before Photoshop existed,” she warns me. “In fact one of the most famous full-body images of Abraham Lincoln [from the Library of Congress, picture above] is not at all what it seems: Lincoln’s head, taken from a seated portrait, was placed onto the body of 7^th US Vice President John C Calhoun. And this was years before Oprah’s head was placed on Ann-Margaret’s body!”

For more choice examples of historical photo manipulation you can read Su’s full article here. For my part, I’m not sure I’ll ever look at a history book the same way again…

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Ironic attending BFI screening of retro equal pay flick Made in Dagenham, just as new statistics reveal gender pay gap widening. 

The film was being shown at the South Bank to mark the imminent opening of the stage musical (9 October, at London's Adelphi Theatre) starring some time Bond girl Gemma Arterton, who was there in person to introduce the film.  

You tend to think of unequal pay as a thing of the past.  Well I do, at least.  Call me naïve but I thought the 1970 Act had dealt with the issue - certainly by now. And the very retro feel of the 1960s-set film / stage production only encourages that view. But a recent Fawcett Society study reveals that changing employment patterns today resulting from the recession are "fuelling a widening inequality gap".  

Now that's definitely something to be making a song and dance about.
  
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Honoured to be invited to Hardwicke Chambers' first ping pong event of the new season.  The set is planning a series over Autumn and Winter, culminating in a grand final at Holborn's famous Bounce next year.  Love the pic of the evening posted by fellow guest Legal Cheek (see right).
Served up with pizza and beer, this is a very contemporary take on corporate entertainment. You can count on Hardwicke to do things differently.  What a breath of fresh air!

A fun metaphor for the daily ping pong of advocacy in the courts?

Silly Season

This week, Account Manager Adele Baxby takes over Clare's blog with a variety of eccentricities that's come off the press recently.

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Although it’s easy to forget with the recent chilly spells, we are still in the throes of summer. And what does summer mean? 

Well, for many it means holidays and the promise of a quiet spell before September and the inevitable new-stationery-back-to-school time of year, making that final push before Christmas.

For the press this period means one thing - "silly season" – a time when the more off-the-wall, salacious or quite frankly wacky news stories get a little more column inches than normal. 

In the spirit of this, I thought I’d take my time at the helm of Clare’s blog to steer through the origins of silly season and celebrate the most ridiculous stories it has produced. 

It may seem like a modern phenomenon but did you know that the term "silly season" was coined in 1861? In 2012 the BBC reported on a university lecturer’s research into the origin of silly season – his findings being that the rise of these more frivolous stories also coincided with the newspaper tax being abolished. This meant the masses could afford to read the paper – and these silly sensations helped them to shift papers.   

It’s not just the UK which has a silly season either – the US calls it the (slightly less jolly-sounding) slow news season and our friends down under see their silly season coincide not just with their summer, but Christmas too. 

So far this summer we have seen the Ice Bucket Challenge take up more and more column inches, especially as an increasing number of celebrities get involved, challenging more famous faces to strip off, douse themselves in freezing cold water (while being filmed of course) and raise money for the ALS association. Even George Bush has got involved. 

We’ve also seen a monkey’s selfie garnering a lot of media attention - helped in part by the accompanying hilarious monkey close-up (The Guardian’s Tim Dowling noted the key elements of a silly season story include “an oversized picture of a cute or disabled animal; an amusing if implausible headline; a weasel-worded sentence that restates the headline in more cautious terms…”). Of course this story actually underlined an interesting legal issue around copyright. 

The Independent has a great round-up of some of the classic silly season stories, including:

• When Benson the carp tragically passed away in 2009, the world’s media mourned his loss. The Times ran the story on the front page and papers across the world reported on the shady circumstances around his death.

• In 2000 the Daily Mail ran a double page spread on crop circles – with a portion of the story using a Siamese cat as a credible source for the circles’ origins. 

• And finally, a personal favourite, in 2005 The Sun reported that by joining up a star constellation, astronomers had found not just actor Richard Wilson’s face – but specifically, that of his One Foot in the Grave character Victor Meldrew. 

Some have mourned that silly season is getting less silly – of course when there is important news to report the papers aren’t going to favour a fortune-telling pooch – but as i editor Oliver Duff says, silly season can offer some light relief – which we could all do with in 2014. 
 

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed a slight deviation down the path of all things silly –‘tis the season after all. We promise normal service will resume next time, when Clare returns from her break!

Kelly Duke

Various members of the Kysen team will be taking over Clare’s blog during the summer period. This week, Account Manager Nick Croysdill finds out how planning a Barry Manilow-themed birthday party is all part of the job for new partner at Kent law firm Brachers, Kelly Duke...
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Law firms are often challenged to demonstrate their commitment to equality of opportunity, with the number of female partners serving as a regular benchmark. Kent firm Brachers, believes neither sex nor background need be barriers to progress - just witness newly-promoted partner Kelly Duke who joined the firm as a trainee secretary 20 years ago and today heads up a practice team of eight.

So what spurred her on to commit to all the extra hours of unpaid study? “I’ve always had a very independent streak and as my colleagues keep reminding me, I’m basically a study geek. I came top of my year during GCSEs, went onto A Levels at college and could have gone on to university but didn’t want to put too much financial burden on my mum, as she was bringing up three of us on her own. As the eldest I really wanted to share some of the responsibilities.”

Kelly enrolled in a legal secretarial course and joined local firm Brachers in 1995. Why law and why Brachers? “I did A-Level Law at college so I suppose the interest was always there – I’ve always hated seeing people wronged, especially if they don’t feel they have their own voices, and the law is a key instrument in combating this. I’m a Kent girl through and through; my family have lived here for over 500 years -  my mum was an apple picker -  so I wanted a firm with established roots that is really committed to the region.”

A stint in the dispute resolution team was followed by a move into private client work. Kelly enrolled on a course for the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, qualified as a CILEx fellow in 2005, and soon began specialising in work for elderly and vulnerable clients. She advises her clients on a whole range of subjects from powers of attorney, wills and Court of Protection work to benefits, care charges and continuing care – and  everything in between.

“It’s such a rewarding area, and I have probably been heavily influenced by the relationship with my grandmother – we are extremely close. I’m passionate about championing the rights of the elderly and vulnerable, many of whom feel they have no right to complain.”

The experiences have been varied to say the least – from attending a hearing in the Court of Protection one day to planning a 50th birthday for an adult with learning disabilities the next. “She is a big Barry Manilow fan so we themed it around the 70’s crooner, with a cake and all. While I can’t quite admit that we were all swooning to Copacabana, it was a fun night and even the local MP was spotted cutting some shapes later on.”

So what are the challenges? “It can be very tough sometimes – I have had to break the news to one elderly gentleman that his wife had passed away the previous night. He had no family nearby and was obviously extremely upset.

“It’s not like other areas of law, where the work revolves around a single transaction, so it can be difficult to switch off due to the close relationships. Balancing work with all the additional study has been a challenge, but I’m very luck to have a supportive husband. The firm has also been very encouraging over the years.

“We also constantly have to challenge people’s expectations and perceptions of legal executives, as some may feel we don’t have the requisite skills. I’d always argue that the work legal executives do at Brachers is often more specialist than general practice work.  Perception is certainly a challenge within this market, but things are improving.

“Everyone here really cares about what they do – motivation within the team is never an issue. We’ve also forged close relationships with KCC, Age UK and other very worthy charities. I can honestly say I love what I do.”

With a female managing partner and over a quarter of its partnership made up of women, Brachers is exceeding some of its City peers in offering equality of opportunity - a smart business move.  

Mark Landon

Mark Landon has been challenging my ideas about What Success Looks Like. As well as being London Managing Partner of multi-award-winning law firm Weightmans, and a market-leading employment lawyer with a very busy work portfolio, Mark is also Secretary of Changing Faces, the charity dedicated to "Challenging the way people face disfigurement and public attitudes towards it." 

When we spoke, he told me how his role in the charity's  new campaign aimed at challenging disfigurement in the workplace, entitled "What Success Looks Like", brings his experience as an employment lawyer nicely together with the insights he has gained through his work at Changing Faces into our society's pre-occupation with appearance and bizarre prejudices around facial disfigurement. I'll repeat here the video link to the Changing Faces' film short "Leo" which I have blogged about previously, as I don't want any of you to have missed it. This little video story illustrates far better than the written word the problem of how quick we all are to equate facial disfigurement with threat or evil.  And, for those of you who missed my previous post on this topic, it's clear this issue is not helped by the film industry at all, given their love of signifying villains by facial scars and the like (think Two-Face, Blofeld, The Joker, etc. See here for more).  This attitude has a particularly debilitating consequence in the employment context, hence Changing Faces' new initiative.

I ask Mark what the campaign is all about: "It's aimed at transforming everyone's confidence and expectations around disfigurement in the workplace.  It can be one of those issues that makes everyone feel awkward.  You know the scenario: you want to avoid staring at a new colleague with an unusual face, so you end up not making proper eye contact, the initial interaction is poor and very uneasy on both sides.  Everyone comes away feeling bad.  It's one of those situations that you'd just rather not face at all.  And you certainly don't want to talk about it.  But it's that silence, the taboo around it all, that makes it worse.

"It's worse still in a recruitment context, and again it's the unhelpful assumptions and anxiety that result from people being too afraid to communicate directly that compounds the issue.  Very few individuals, interviewers and employers are confident enough to talk about "the elephant in the room": candidates don't discuss their mark, scar or facial condition out of fear of jeopardising their chances ... and many ask why they should have to mention it.  Interviewers are fearful of asking the wrong thing or using inappropriate words or being accused of discrimination."

The statistics on the Changing Faces website make for uncomfortable reading: 43% of people said they'd decided not to apply for a job "because they believed their face wouldn't fit", compared to 4% of people who did not have unusual facial features.  22% had been told by an interviewer that they wouldn't get the job because of the way they looked.  46% said an interviewer seemed uncomfortable with the way they looked.  And 55% thought that their colleagues treated them differently.

"The Changing Faces campaign is all about opening up the conversation and encouraging people to talk openly," he explains.  "The big idea behind the campaign is that by demonstrating that success can and does look like in the workplace we can start to replace the fear of rejection, of causing offence and of being accused of discrimination, with confident dialogue, open-mindedness and fair decision-making."

Well I for one am certainly a believer in the power of conversation. You can find out more about the campaign here.

Law is such a small world isn't it? I blogged only a couple of weeks ago about our good friends at Serle Court breaking out in a sweat for Changing Faces, raising money for them in the Standard Chartered City Race. Chief Executive Nicola Sawford became a trustee of the charity a year or so ago.  I asked Mark if he has ever come across her.  "I interviewed her when she was recruited to the board of trustees!" he tells me.  I've worked closely with both Nicola and Mark for years, and now I find out they are connected to each other for reasons outside their work in law.  I think the world of both of them; two consummate professionals at the very top of their respective trees.  No wonder they sought each other out eventually   
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You can look forward to some Guest Blogs from my Kysen colleagues over August as I will be taking a little break from it over the Summer.  I will be using the time to catch up on some business reading. 

I have a few books lined up already: Richard Susskind's Tomorrow's Lawyers of course, and a recommendation from Fay Gillott at 7 Bedford Row  "Oh Do Shut Up Dear" about how women's voices have been silenced in the public sphere throughout the history of Western culture. But I'm up for more suggestions! So do please let me know any particularly interesting or provocative reads.
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What better way to wind down to my Summer break than a chilled Friday afternoon playing our "SuPR Powers!" game. Since my last blog post about it, we've invested a little in developing it as a physical asset. SuPR Powers! is a training game we have devised, to encourage an internal conversation about seeing "difficulty" as an opportunity to show off your skills, rather than as a cue to give up. Because the best PRs are the ones who always persevere and go the extra mile to get the very best possible result every time... the ones who see difficult situations and obstacles as opportunities to shine and show how good they are. If you think of super heroes in literature and film, they are all defined by adversity.  That's what creates the opportunity for them to bring out their special powers. After all, if the world had never been under threat, Clark Kent would never have gone into THAT phone box and put on THAT costume. 

Yes, we're setting the expectation very high at Kysen. But playing SuPR Powers! on our roof terrace in the sunshine on a late Friday afternoon, drink in hand, makes being SuPR Heroes fun too!

Chris Sherliker

Chris Sherliker (@London_Law_Firm) likes to shake things up. He and his partners at Silverman Sherliker are famous for disrupting the status quo in ways that would make Professor Richard Susskind proud. This is the man who took a leap of faith in the 1980s, leaving a prestigious establishment legal career (an MA in Law from Cambridge University, roles at Herbert Smith, the European Commission and Cameron McKenna) to join an ambitious and forward-looking but sole practitioner, Jonathan Silverman. Risky for sure. But a phenomenally successful move, the autonomy that comes with working in a small, entrepreneurial team giving him the opportunity to show off his flair for innovation and make a name for himself. Quite literally: the firm changed its name to Silverman Sherliker soon after he joined.

Swapping stories about our journeys in law, I tell him mine began in 1988 assisting the first ever in-house marketing professional hired after a Law Society rule first changed allowing solicitors to advertise. "My firm went on the telly the very next day!" he astounds me. Talk about not wasting time! But his track record of innovation goes beyond wizzy new ways to do legal business and includes setting new case law precedents. In the early 1980s he took on a competition case (thanks to his Brussels credentials) challenging the monopoly of the opticians profession over the market for reading glasses. In those days, by law only registered opticians could dispense them, even though no prescription is involved - they only magnify. His case was successful and the stranglehold broken, so next time you buy a pair of stylish, cheap reading glasses over the counter at Boots or at Waterstones, you know who to thank! I was particularly impressed by this because a number of legal futurists I know will say that the removal of the opticians monopoly is a much better parallel for what's happening in the legal market post-Legal-Services-Act than the supermarket analogy that the "Tesco Law" tag suggests. I'm thinking in particular of DLA Piper's Head of Proposition Development and Creative Services Stephen Allen (love the job title btw), but there are significant others too.

Chris was one of the first lawyers to take to Twitter in the early "glory" days, as @London_Law_Firm. (How did he manage to snaffle such an enviable Twitter ID? First Mover Advantage, that's how!)  I'm always interested in gleaning an insight into "where next" from these legal pioneers.

When we met up for lunch, he had just that morning hosted a live discussion branded #coffeebreaklaw, structured as a timed event on Twitter, "Smoothest Moves: Legal Tips On Buying A Property". He told me he was overwhelmed at the level of interest it generated and the quality of names getting involved, bringing new contacts to the firm. Zoopla to name one. Fantastic way to make new connections in areas in which you're serious about doing business! 

Being such an early adopter of social media, can he point to any examples where he's won business directly? "Most definitely. But I have to say, how we have done it at Silverman Sherliker is not necessarily a model larger firms can follow. Our best examples of success are where we've been sufficiently fleet of foot to respond to a market change, eg setting up a portal for affected people to come together and explore options/solutions. Larger firms often struggle to move quickly enough to make the most of these opportunities. For example, when the News of The World folded, the very next day we set up a News of The World Employee Action Group, tweeting a link to a page on our website inviting the paper's former workers to join the Group, and offering help and advice. Future career opportunities for these innocent workers were blighted because of management's alleged wrongdoing. Many felt they were effectively being scape-goated and punished when they had done no wrong. They themselves were not responsible for the circumstances giving rise to the closure of the paper, yet they were suffering a detriment. So we thought they may be entitled to claim Stigma Damages. In fact the marketing initiative opened the door to all manner of other types of employment claims on behalf of these people, aside from the Stigma issue. So a marketing success story. But for large law firms, by the time large firms have cleared all the internal approvals necessary for an initiative like this, the window of opportunity has often closed! I have to say it's one of the reasons I so enjoy being in a small firm."

But there are plenty of small firms that don't move as smartly in the marketplace as Silverman Sherliker, I point out.  In many cases, other firms’ “where next”, especially when it comes to smart use of social media, is a matter of catching up with Sherliker et al. Thanks for showing us how it’s done Chris!
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Round of applause for the Serle Court team who took part in the Standard Chartered City Race raising money for Changing Faces, the charity that challenges public attitudes towards people with facial disfigurement... or as the charity would say, "unusual faces". Quite right. You only have to consider how often facial scars are used in films to signify an evil villain to realise we have an issue to face up here. (Think Javier Bardem's Raoul Silva in Skyfall, Donald Pleasance's Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. But the Bond franchise doesn't have a monopoly on this... there's Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight who turns from good to evil after his face becomes disfigured in an attack and of course there's the infamous Freddy Krueger. There are plenty more...) 

If this is a subject close to your heart, you might like to take a closer look at a short film by Changing Faces that screened in 750 cinemas in the UK a while ago and challenged the "scarred baddie" stereotype. 

Donations are still being accepted on the Serle Court JustGiving page. You can click here. 

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"Would you wear denim custom ripped by lions and tigers?" Prize for standout headine this week has to go to The Guardian for its lead into this astonishing story about Japanese brand Zoo Jeans, "the only jeans on earth designed by dangerous animals." Unbelievably, lions, bears and tigers are involved in a process where denim is thrown into their compounds at a Hitachi zoo until the material is ripped and torn. 

Of course The Guardian didn't miss the obvious Zoolander references. If it had been a plotline in that very silly comedy masterpiece it wouldn't be any harder to believe. Fact really is stranger than fiction.

Francesca Lathbury

Berwin Leighton Paisner's Design Studio Manager Francesca Lathbury revealed to me a whole new meaning to the word "creative" this week. We have been working together on a project involving a big visual element running alongside an editorial programme and I have been fascinated by her contribution in meetings, how her mind immediately interprets in graphic form all the ideas and concepts we discuss in words. Not only does she come up with some inspired illustrative devices, whether advising on infographics, diagrams and other illustrations, but she's brilliant on how best to use "text bursts" and headlines, explaining to us how the mind takes information in.

I was curious to know where her skill set comes from, so I asked her about her background. Before joining  BLP over three years ago she was the Studio Manager at Innovate Product Design, the award-winning consultancy famous for creating proto-types for inventors, of the sort you see in the Dragons' Den. 

"Our work at Innovate was all about taking an inventor's idea and finding a way to make it work in practice, so taking it from the piece of paper it is written on and turning it into a 3D product in the real world and making sure it turns out a viable, marketable product. It is a very exciting process, being involved in that first step from concept to reality." This is what I mean by Frankie giving new meaning to the descriptor "creative". "You develop a very particular skill set doing that type of work. Before you even start with your creative skills, you have to be a good listener, as understanding the inventor's idea at the outset is absolutely critical. Then you have to have a blend of both highly creative and practical skills because the core of the job is about making an idea work in the real world." I bet this sort of mix of the creative and the highly practical is not a given in the design community, so I ask her. "There's a surprising diversity amongst designers. People often think of designers as one type only: artsy, free-flowing ideas, left-brain dominant, etc. But every designer I've ever worked with is different and the most successful teams I have worked in have been so because the mix of different personality types, approaches and abilities meshed really well together."

I put it to Frankie that these diagnostic and interpretive skills must come in pretty handy dealing with lawyers who, being wordsmiths, don't generally think in visual terms at all. "It certainly helps" she says. "And it's what I like most about the job: getting under the skin of what it is a lawyer is trying to express to a particular audience with a given piece of marketing collateral and finding a way to put that across graphically. It's so rewarding when you nail it for someone." 

I've often heard BLP's Corporate Comms Head Caroline Grant and Global Marketing Head Ash Coleman-Smith talk about the emphasis BLP places on "the visual", seeing this as a key differentiator from other law firms and therefore having a significant role to play in the firm's competitive strategy. Its Design Studio is highly respected by the rest of the profession and an undoubted leader, being bolder, more innovative, taking more risks and showing others the way. "We tend not to recruit from within the profession," Frankie tells me, "because we find the knowledge of latest design trends and innovations is just not there. We're keen to keep our team fresh and bang-up-to-date so we prefer to hire people in from the design consultancies that do the interesting work that we all see in magazines, in shops and on TV."

We have BLP to thank for a good portion of the legal profession's own learning and evolution in design. Good to know you Frankie and a privilege to be watching her in action at such close quarters.  

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Had fun at Tate Liverpool, swinging by the gallery on a visit to our good friends at Weightmans this week. We were a little disappointed to miss the start of the Mondrian exhibition by just a few days (it started last Friday, 6 June) and our request to peek in to the crates before the paintings were set up was very politely declined. But we did enjoy the "Constellations" series, and the novel way that works of a wide range of artists is collated, connections between them explained by the use of constellation diagrams eg showing the links from Picasso, to Man Ray, to Jackson Pollock, to Simon Starling. 

In the Tate's words: "a fresh way of viewing and understanding artworks through correspondences rather than chronological narrative." I'm sure Frankie would approve. :) 
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Call me a rebel, but I'm loving this very original form of graffiti on the Tube. It's been an underground phenomenon for a little while now, but these guerilla stickers masquerading as official Transport for London notices just get better. Here's a selection of my favourites. Care to share yours? And are there any lawyers among you who can tell us how many and which laws they are breaking?