German lawyers fighting in Munich?

Under the heading Exclusive: Two Linklaters partners resign after office party fight
Roll on Friday reports that two partners at Linklaters in Munich have resigned after a fight at an Oktoberfest party.

I’m not sure if this is right because I can still find Laurenz Schmitt on the Linklaters site, but not thomas Elser.

LATER NOTE: Here’s a German report from November. It looks as if just Thomas Elser left, and Linklaters weren’t saying why.

4 thoughts on “German lawyers fighting in Munich?

  1. It’s a such a shame that there were these alleged resignations over such a ‘normal’ male-centred affray when their counterparts in London did not step down after similar incidents.

    I have knowledge of several, including a couple tipsy 6-foot partners of a nationally known English firm of Solicitors – that used to be off the Aldwych – thumping each other at an office party, one for objecting to the multilingual-boasting ways of the other (‘I know Danish, German, French, Italian and Spanish’) and, not too far away in the open-air ‘boxing ring’ of Lincoln’s Inn Fields – venue of another Cassius Clay-alias Muhammad Ali-type ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ or ‘Thriller in Manila’ – two fully robed, young and ‘sober’ barristers with wigs on, post-trial, knocking the stuffing out of each other.

    I was also taken aback, during my legal clerkship, to hear that – at a Christmas office party – another drunken 6-foot ‘Magic Circle’ City Solicitor partner had threatened to clock a shorter costs-clerk friend of mine for targeting a woman secretary the partner himself was after :’do you want a thump, mate?’

    And, yes, I still remember the names.

  2. Ah, I knew I could lure you out of comment retirement with the right topic.
    Am I to assume that it is only the branch of the profession with the harder exams that displays this conduct? Or was the punch-up in the first episode of the latest series of ‘Silk’ more convincing than I thought?
    Of course we don’t know exactly what happened and why only one of the lawyers was obliged to resign, but it does look a bit harsh.

  3. If you mean, as usual, that Solicitors’ finals are harder, then we also need to consider the numerical superiority over barristers – 10 times as many in England & Wales – and the aversion of women members of each branch of the legal profession to cat-fights, in public at least.

    However, my sister-in-law – as a professional support lawyer for a City of London ‘Magic Circle’ topper – did smash a bullying and nasty, snitching male ex-colleague in the face on a chance encounter at a pub, adding: ‘go on, report me to the police and the Law Society then!’. He never did.

    It is also unfortunate that a partner of another Magic Circle satellite in Tokyo – and who was at law school with me in Guildford – hit his Japanese girlfriend in the face and was promptly arrested by the local police at a Gleneagles hotel on a golfing tour. It made the front-page legal news South of the Border. Bit of a paradox for a Sassenach to be arrested in Scotland for violence, ‘presumably whilst tipsy’.

    Yes, I fear that the punch-up in the latest episode of Silk may well have been loosely based on the Lincoln’s Inn Fields altercation 20 years ago and that is still reverberating today.

    As for the Munich encounter, all I can say is that: ‘boys will be boys’. (I will save my out-of-control Frenchwomen and Greek male lawyer anecdotes for another time.)

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