Daily Diary

Legal Week Awards 2006: Diary special

Posted 30/11/2006 by legalweekblogs.com SU

The bunting has been packed away, the band finally silenced and this morning’s hangovers downgraded from ‘life threatening’ to ‘critical’. Yes, the long-awaited Legal Week Awards are over for another year.

The most dazzling stars in the legal firmament (or EC3, anyway) were in sparkling form last night as the City glitterati squeezed well-fed torsos under straining cummerbunds to gather at fabulous Old Billingsgate for the annual knees-up. Ultra-professional master of ceremonies Rob Brydon kept a tighter grip on proceedings than DLA Piper does on its equity, despite the insistence of some partners that they were simply too busy to have heard of the top Celtic comic, feebly claiming they were working far too hard to catch repeats of cult classic Marion And Geoff on BBC Three.

Nevertheless, Christmas came early for a number of City icons. Diary regular and Weil Gotshal & Manges London chief Mike Francies was beaming after scooping the Deal Lawyer of the Year, although he was rather less impressed to see Weil Gotshal nominated in the Mid-Market M&A Team of the Year category and warned he would refuse to collect it if they won - the great big whinger. Lucky Travers Smith saved everyone's blushes by winning that particular award.

Elsewhere, Linklaters’ Richard Youle continued his transformation into FrankenYoule, with the boyish buyout wunderkind lording it shamelessly after picking up the Cheeky Young Scamp of the Year award. A diva is born - and Legal Week has only got itself to blame. Our apologies go the rest of Linklaters’ corporate team.

Special thanks also go to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer firebrand Claire Wills who, Jordan-style, was kind enough to point out to cowed Legal Weekers how they got every single award wrong.

DLA Piper chief Nigel Knowles, meanwhile, picked up a gong for the second year in a row, following up last year’s Partner of the Year success by picking up the Young Corporate Counsel of the Year award – as a dead ringer for the otherwise-detained Virgin in-house lawyer Ian Woods. In a move that will do little to scotch suggestions of nepotism in senior City circles, Knowles was presented with ‘his’ gong by Andrew Darwin – the UK managing director of, yup, DLA Piper.

Although one Herbert Smith partner was temporarily diverted at a key moment by a call from the pest control people dealing with his unfortunate squirrel infestation, the evening was otherwise a roaring success.

The fun was perhaps best summed up by one renowned party-girl PR: “You know you have had a good night when you sound like a squawking pre-pubescent boy, your shoes have gone missing and your last recollection is having a blaring argument with a coat-stand woman.”

Photographic evidence of the evening will be available on this blog in due course. In the meantime, in case you were unable to make it last night or simply couldn't remember what happened after too many ales, you can relive the occasion with our exclusive video diary.

(Watch video here)

Look out for Travers Smith top man Chris Carroll giving future shortlistees valuable clues about when you haven’t got a chance of winning, Clifford Chance international man of mystery Jeremy Sandelson getting ready for his (extreme) close-up and Freshfields litigation wallah Ian Terry and corporate chief Tim Jones going wild on the dance-floor…before being comprehensively upstaged by senior partner Konstantin Mettenheimer. If only the Legal Week judges could have seen Konstantin in action, he would surely have brushed aside Tony "two left-feet" Angel for the best management type award.

Luckily the camera was absent when die-hard revellers moved on to the Dover Street Wine Bar, where a group of unsuspecting bankers - who had moved on from an event of their own at the Dorchester Hotel - found themselves suddenly outnumbered by a horde of drunken lawyers...