Editorial note: welcome to Legal Cheek’s new gossip column. It’ll run every time we get a backlog of stories where we’re unable to name names for legal reasons.
*News has reached us of an extremely respectable QC who was refused entry to a central London nightclub because the bouncers deemed him too drunk. The incident happened over a year ago, but the QC has since gone on to take a very public role at the Bar. “He was completely wasted – and it was the middle of the week,” said a horrified lawyer who witnessed the scene.
*There was uproar when we named the 27 year-old Bar graduate who Anthony Arlidge QC, 76, left Constance Briscoe for. But Arlidge isn’t the only senior lawyer in a relationship with a member of the legal profession many years his junior. An equity partner at a top 20 City law firm is known to be involved in a similar – if rather more secretive – set-up with a colleague who has recently completed her training contract.
*Inns of Court dinners are well known for the opportunity they provide barristers with time on their hands to wow impressionable wannabes. Amid the adoration, sometimes the barristers get rather carried away, as happened earlier this year when one evoked the spirit of the Shearman & Sterling ‘grope’ associate by unsuccessfully trying it on with a BPTC student during a post-dining visit to a Soho strip club.
*And finally, gay students beginning their legal studies this autumn should beware of the “homophobic banter” that was apparently commonplace in the canteen of one London law school during the last academic year. We’ve had this from several different sources, but have been unable to name the law school in question without any hard evidence. Feel free to send us some.
If you have any juicy titbits of gossip, high brow or from the gutter, please email (in the strictest of confidence) tips@legalcheek.com.