Daily Diary

Ward Hadaway's animal magic

Posted 3/07/2008 by Daily Diary

“Big, powerful and intelligent… we must mean business,” reads the spiel on the website for top four Newcastle firm Ward Hadaway, accompanied by a (presumably Photoshopped) picture of a gorilla in a pinstripe suit. Either that or the PG Tips chimps have been to acting classes.

With law firms certainly not averse to ‘borrowing’ good ideas from rivals — we should launch in Milan, we need to merge, we should sack everyone over 40 — it’s only a matter of time before more firms start defining themselves in terms of the animal kingdom. How about:

DLA Piper — labradoodle. Unconvincing, much-derided product of unnatural union designed to make owner look trendy.

Eversheds — pigeon. Impossible to avoid anywhere remotely urban.

Payne Hicks Beach — skunk. Not immediately dangerous until threatened, when it kicks up a monumental stink at the slightest provocation.

Slaughter and May — great white shark. Untouched by evolution for millions of years, increasingly rare relic of a bygone era but still just about the biggest fish in the sea; or perhaps — cockroach. Been around far longer than anyone can remember and will still be here after we’re all dead and gone. As apocalyptically-minded scientists often point out, in the event of nuclear holocaust, the only survivors will be cockroaches and Slaughters.

Freshfields — gecko. Able to shed entire limbs/departments when threatened by more agile predators. May spontaneously regenerate a new limb in the shape of Maurice Allen. [That’s enough ‘law firms as animals’ — Ed.]