In the end, it was the clients wot won it. So effusive was the praise emanating from Slaughter and May’s roster of faithful corporate counsel during the research for Legal Week’s Corporate Team of the Year award, you would think the firm was resorting to bribery, blackmail or Boardman.

The client gushing included: “Slaughters has been absolutely superb”, “they do not rest on their laurels and they continue to give corporate Britain what it wants” and “they use a relatively small amount of people doing lots of different things, which is terrific”.