Daily Diary

Conflicts of inquest

Posted 23/11/2006 by legalweekblogs.com SU

It has been a long time since The Diary felt moved to launch a special investigation. Keen readers will remember the last such occasion, when your faithful correspondent authored a special report on shameful photo-trickery and vote-rigging in a web-poll of hunky City lawyers (see hard-hitting undercover investigation).

Once again it is a case of voting skulduggery that has inflamed your correspondent's sense of injustice - this time on the equally controversial subject of ethical rules on conflicts and confidentiality. Yes, The Diary is sad to report that a recent web-poll on this mightyorgan.com - gauging lawyers’, ahem, adherence to dusty old conduct rules - has been knobbled.

The evidence is compelling. After seven days of polling, unsurprisingly, a massive majority of voters concluded that corporate lawyers were paying about as much attention to the conflict rules as Britney Spears does to her marriage guidance counsellor. Then - shock horror! - as the weekly vote was about to close, no less than 60 votes appeared within an hour, all in the 'lawyers are honest, guv' camp, suddenly swinging the ballot to a hung vote.

While The Diary as yet has no proof of the whereabouts of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s corporate department on Tuesday afternoon, Diary spies will be scouring the City for magic circle partners with signs of repetitive strain injury from over-zealous mouse-clicking.

Likewise, discussions are already underway with the enormous team of boffins who maintain Legal Week’s space-age website to locate the guilty parties.

In the meantime, readers with inside intelligence on the evil vote-riggers can email in confidence to thediary@legalweek.com.

A Freshfields partner on Tuesday - allegedly