Losing one of your top partners is bad enough. But losing him just a few months after holding a lavish party in his honour to which you invited all your cherished clients must be excruciating.

Well, it has just happened to Norton Rose. When Jamie Logie, the head of the firm's Singapore office, returned to London last May to head the banking industry group, Norton Rose held a massive party in Lincoln's Inn to celebrate his home-coming.

By all accounts the firm's project finance clients were out in force. And there, at the centre of things, was one Jamie Logie, basking gratefully in the limelight.

Of course, nobody would have known it at the time, but within a year of the expensive bash he had upped stumps and joined that classy US outfit Sullivan & Cromwell.