Mishcon de Reya LLP is a British law firm with offices in London and Singapore. Founded in 1937, it currently employs more than 900 people with over 500 lawyers. It is regarded as forming part of the "Silver Circle" of leading UK law firms. In March 2017, the firm was announced Law Firm of the Year at the Legal Business Awards. Mishcon de Reya achieved revenue of £177.8m in 2018/19- an increase of 10% from 2017/18. PEP hit £1m in 2018.
Mishcon de Reya was formed by the merger of Victor Mishcon & Co, a one-man office founded by Victor Mishcon, and Bartletts de Reya. In 2008, the firm launched the specialist 'Pink Law' Legal Advice Centre in conjunction with Queen Mary, University of London and two other city law firms. The project offers free and impartial legal advice on issues affecting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community, such as employment discrimination, civil partnerships and cohabitation. The firm became a limited liability partnership on 9 October 2015. Mishcon de Reya was named Law Firm of the Year at The Legal Business Awards 2017. Mishcon de Reya has also been associated with the murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. According to The Guardian newspaper: "In the months before her death, the anti-corruption journalist received letters from the London office of the blue-chip firm Mishcon de Reya, which specialises in bringing defamation cases. Mishcon had been hired to defend the reputation of a client doing business in Malta. 'The firm sought to cripple her financially with libel action in UK courts,' Caruana Galizia’s three sons claim in a letter to the writers’ campaign group English PEN and seen by the Guardian. 'Had our mother not been murdered, they would have succeeded.'” According to the British satirical magazine, Private Eye: "Daphne also wrote about receiving 'harassing letters from Mishcon de Reya in London' that threatened 'to ruin me financially in a London court.' Letters from Mishcon, seen by the Eye, order her to remove articles discussing the lucrative sale of Maltese passports and the EU citizenship that goes with them."
Notable clients
In 1995, the firm gained attention when Anthony Julius represented Diana, Princess of Wales in her divorce. In 2000, the firm represented Deborah Lipstadt in the case David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt. The 2016 film Denial was based on this case. Mishcon de Reya's Employment team won a ground-breaking victory in the UK Supreme Court on behalf of its client, Krista Bates van Winkelhof, in which it was determined that members of LLPs do have the protection of whistleblowing legislation. In 2016 the Supreme Court ruled financial claims can be brought over 20 years after divorce for client Kathleen Wyatt. In 2016 the company co-ordinated a challenge in the High Court by Gina Miller, an investment manager and philanthropist, against the process of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. The Government in January 2017, appealed the High Court ruling to the Supreme Court, but were unsuccessful. In a majority decision, it ruled that Parliament must vote on whether the Government can start the process of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. In 2019 the Court of Appeal overturned the Judgment of Mr Justice Warby dated 8 October 2018 which had refused Mishcon de Reya's client, Richard Lloyd, permission to serve a representative action on Google LLC. The claim relates to what is known as the "Safari Workaround" - Google's alleged unlawful and clandestine tracking of iPhone users in 2011 and 2012 without their consent through the use of third party cookies.
