Photographic evidence proves that not even cut price booze can convince legal London to fall in love with the solicitors’ trade union
Bar wars in Chancery Lane have taken another exciting twist — cheap pub, the Law Society, has backed down on its radical price slashing.
Only a fortnight ago, the society made the biggest bid in the organisation’s 180-year history to serve solicitor needs. It took on bargain basement boozer Wetherspoons over the road by instructing its bar manager to slash the price of lager.
The society’s neo-classical building was garlanded in signs advertising that pints of Stella Artois — known in the profession as “senior partner beater” — were going for £2.85. While bottled beers were being knocked out at £2.95.
Both rates substantially undercut the completion, Wetherspoons’ cattle-market pub, the Knights Templar.
Bar staff braced themselves for a stampede of scruffy law students and even scruffier practising lawyers — but, as our photograph demonstrates, even the prospect of getting pissed for less than 15 quid was not enough to lure the legal profession to the Law Society.
Word now reaches Legal Cheek that instead of bravely slashing lager prices further, the society has increased the price of a pint of Stella to £3.00. That’s still good value — the Templar is reportedly holding firm at 75 pence more.
But as one brave drinker tweets, even the society’s additional marketing gambit of flogging bottles of screw-top plonk for a tenner a pop is not exactly bringing in the punters by the coach load. These photographs from law student Marie Davoise were taken at peak drinking time on a recent Thursday evening.
@legalcheek Price for a pint went up to 3£ at Law Society but the Thursday drinks atmosphere totally makes up for it pic.twitter.com/fexMiHQWZb
— Marie Davoise (@mariedavoise) July 18, 2014
On the basis of that crush at the bar, pub landlord — Law Society chief executive Des “Del Boy” Hudson — won’t be recruiting an elite team of bouncers.
Del Boy himself was meant to be hanging up his beer mats and giving the bar a final wipe down last week, following the Law Society’s annual general meeting.
He had told reporters earlier in the year that he was leaving the pub trade, having hankered for another line of work for some time (and that his decision was nothing whatsoever to do with pesky solicitors passing a vote of no confidence in his ability to do his other job — running the solicitors’ representation body).
But Chancery Lane has now said Hudson will carry on pulling pints until at least the end of the summer, while it struggles to find a suitable replacement. Legal Cheek understands that head hunters approached Peggy Mitchell for the chief exec/publican role, but she could not be coaxed out of retirement.
Previously:
Law Society undercuts Wetherspoons in bid to become cheapest boozer in London [Legal Cheek]