Alan Peck’s decision to retire from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer next year will deprive the City’s tight-knit legal community of one of its more colourful personalities.

It was Peck, after all, who urged readers of the Financial Times not to weep for the firm’s assistants, or ‘little darlings’ as he called them, in the wake of the firm’s decision to freeze their salary bands last year.