With partners taking to marketing as easily as ducks to ice-skating, law firms are learning that alumni parties are one very valuable way of getting their claws into a whole bunch of potentially useful people all under one roof.

Former associates who treacherously left their firms for the joys of the in-house world suddenly find themselves flavour of the, er, evening, mingling alongside the occasional Diary drop-out who stumbled in
for the free booze.