Attack dog lawyers loved by the rich and famous...

WHEN the rich and famous want to silence their critics, it is to ‘attack dog’ lawyers Schillings that they frequently turn.

Media experts said choosing the aggressive London-based Schillings over the Royal Family’s preferred law firm Harbottle & Lewis – who represented the couple when they initially raised concerns about the letter with The Mail on Sunday – was a risky move by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. One said it could be seen as ‘using a sledgehammer to crack a nut’.

The firm was founded in 1984 by Keith Schilling, now 63, the son of a jobless father and a shopworker mother, who left school at 15 to be a clerk in a media law firm.

He has since been at the forefront of efforts by lawyers in the reputation protection business to exploit the Human Rights Act passed under Labour as one of the legal weapons that can be used against newspapers and broadcasters.

His firm used Article Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights to persuade Law Lords in 2004 that the model Naomi Campbell should not have been pictured outside a drug rehabilitation clinic. The case established privacy law in Britain and since then the Schillings name has been found on warning documents in the legal offices of media organisations across the country.

Schillings became the go-to law firm for those wanting to obtain injunctions to gag newspapers from publishing stories that are seen as damaging. It has had many successes, but some high-profile failures too.

It suffered a notable setback in 2007 when one of its most influential clients, Lord Browne of Madingley, lost a battle with The Mail on Sunday.

The BP chief executive resigned after 41 years with the oil giant after he admitted he had lied to the court over how he met his former boyfriend Jeff Chevalier. Interestingly, Lord Browne is now listed on Schillings’ website as chairman of its advisory board.

The firm became expert at seeking so-called super-injunctions, where even the reporting of the injunction’s existence was banned. The orders, however, proved useless when public outrage led to celebrities being outed on Twitter and even in Parliament.

Recently the firm represented retail tycoon Sir Philip Green, who suffered humiliation when he was forced to drop a court injunction that stopped the media reporting allegations made by five former staff.

Combative Mr Schilling has been called ‘the silencer’ because of his readiness to stop the presses, once suggesting that there were ‘too many newspapers’.

Of the decision by the Duke and Duchess to hire his firm, media commentator Roy Greenslade said: ‘The choice of legal firm is interesting. I can’t remember that they’ve [the Royal Family] used Schillings before. Is [Harry] taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut?’