“What I want from my external legal advisers are enormous drinks parties,” says Chris Thirsk, senior programme lawyer at Channel 5. “Corporate hospitality is vital, especially if it involves trips to Lord’s. DJ Freeman, our main legal adviser, recently organised softball matches between us and Channel Four, which was great.”
While this attitude can arguably be put down to typical Channel 5 ‘brashness’, Thirsk, part of an 18-strong legal team, clearly understands that his legal advisers value his company’s status as a high-profile television client. Television companies tend to use their own in-house lawyers for day-to-day matters, so any work that is handled externally can normally be relied on to generate good PR for the firm handling the work. Channel 5 handles most of the company’s regulatory and marketing work in-house, although it does use DJ Freeman on a retainer basis and Travers Smith Braithwaite for its major corporate transactions.
