÷ The legal merry-go-round has got a push from Brexit

ERGO has been so busy following the travails of Harvey Specter in Suits, the runaway Netflix legal series, whose seventh season kicked off last week, that I forgot to look in my own backyard for some hot legal gossip.

And it’s all fun in the world of funds these days, it seems. Word reaches me that not one, not two, but three partners in top five law firm William Fry will be joining rival magic circler Arthur Cox early next year, in what is being described by m’learned friends as the legal steal of the decade.

Ian Dillon, partner in William Fry’s asset management and investment funds, is to depart, along with Cormac Cummins and Tara O’Reilly of the same parish.

Clients are staying put, I hear. Which is just as well, as the trio are very well regarded. Cummins alone represents some of the largest fund promoters in the Irish market, including BlackRock, Barclays, BNY Mellon, Lazard, State Street and Vanguard.

It’s a tough pill for William Fry’s near 30-strong funds department to swallow and one of the biggest joint departures in the legal domain in recent years.

Such en-masse departures are common in the UK and the US, but senior hires in Ireland tend to move more quietly — and individually — in this small if buoyant legal market. But the William Fry trio are not the only ones on the move.

Pinsent Masons,the UK law firm, recently poached Gayle Bowen, a partner specialising in investment funds and current chair of the Irish Funds Legal & Regulatory Committee, from Walkers. Andreas Carney, a partner who specialises in outsourcing, data protection and IT, joined Pinsent from Matheson. And Dennis Agnew, a partner who specialises in corporate law, joined Pinsent from Byrne Wallace,

Irish law firms are nursing not so much post-Brexit blues but a fear that their London counterparts, more than 1,000 of whom have registered with the Law Society of Ireland in a pre-emptive strike, may come looking to snap even more domestic talent.

Expect more than a few Specter-style moves if Blighty really does leave the EU.