If, as seems likely, the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lawyer Matthew Courtney did commit suicide, he will not have been the first UK lawyer to have taken his own life over the past year.
Hilary Tilby, chief executive of the charity LawCare – which provides confidential advice to lawyers suffering from stress, alcoholism and other problems – knows of around half-a-dozen cases. One of them was Katherine Ward, the senior Rolls-Royce lawyer who was last year photographed jumping out of the window of a hotel in South Kensington.
