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Addleshaw Goddard: a haven for notorious criminals?

September 29, 2008

What is going on within the offices of Addleshaw Goddard?

The Lawyer reports here that the firm’s decision to purchase 36 prints by photographer David Bailey has sparked a row, for among said prints is one of notorious East End gangsters the Kray twins. It has apparently been suggested that a law firm may not be an appropriate setting for photographs of criminals, notorious or otherwise.

This contention raises an interesting line of thought. Should a lawyer commuting to work on a train be allowed to read an outré novel such as Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho? Presumably, this is “inappropriate” – though if said lawyer is reading the tome out of work hours, perhaps that’s OK? What, though, if he or she were to bring a copy of John Hawkes’ The Lime Twig into the office? Or, yet worse, Nabokov’s Lolita?  Surely it is inappropriate for lawyers to read these things.

Unless, of course, they have to read them for libel and other legal risks. The late, great Peter Carter-Ruck was famously charged with reading Lolita for these very reasons. He suggested four changes. If memory serves, not one was accepted.

The image of the Kray twins is courtesy of Michael Welch Sculptures.  It was initially deemed inappropriate for the Legal Business section of this blog, but after consultation with a libel lawyer it was felt that publication – just this once – would be permitted. Said libel lawyer also advised that no one in a million years would really think that Addleshaw Goddard is a haven for notorious criminals (for it is not), and so the headline was also allowed to stand. Meanwhile, a City law firm was rumoured to be hanging new work by Jeff Koons in its foyer. The libel lawyer said we should keep stum about this, for Koons has yet to be sanctified by the passage of time and, as said lawyer said, “the media might characterise the hanging in controversial terms when it is a storm in a teacup, the problem being that even storms in teacups can be the source of libel actions. That’ll be £10,750.”