Trade, business immigration and sanctions on Iran were the first subjects in the minds of London-based lawyers as they woke up to the shock realisation that Donald Trump had won the race to become the 45th president of the United States.

Trading places

On trade, Trump had seemed keener than Barack Obama to cut a quick deal with the UK once the May government has disentangled the country from the EU. However, Bernardine Adkins, a partner at Gowling WLG, an Anglo-Canadian law firm, warned against getting our hopes up.

“Relief at the UK being at the front of the queue for a US trade agreement may well dissolve as we realise just how far apart the UK is to ‘fortress America’ in its approach to free trade,” she said.

She pointed out that Liam Fox, the secretary of state for international trade, recently quoted Adam Smith’s stance that it was a “moral right” for people to buy whatever they wanted from those who sell it to them cheapest. That position contrasts sharply with Trump’s rhetoric on dumped steel and the failure of the political classes to act.

Doing green card business

Business immigration is another area that will have City hearts in mouths. During the campaign, Trump suggested that he would put a hold on new “green cards”.
“It is unclear yet how this might be implemented, if at all,” commented Claire Nilson, a lawyer with the transatlantic firm Faegre Baker Daniels.

“Mr Trump is, first and foremost, a business person,” she said, “so it will be interesting to see how commercial pragmatism may enter the equation." She also pointed out that on the election trail, Trump's robust statements on immigration focused on those already in the US without authorisation. “His employment-focused immigration policies are less clear but are likely to place emphasis on requiring employers to hire US workers."

Going nuclear over Iran

Renegotiating the deal cut last year between various western powers and Iran over the latter’s nuclear development programme also looks to be a tough call for the White House new boy.

“Whilst there have been fears about a unilateral re-imposition of sanctions,” said Patrick Murphy, a partner Clyde & Co, “the reality is that it would be very difficult for the US to re-impose sanctions that affected European companies if the EU did not impose the same sanctions. It brings with it the possibility of a transatlantic quarrel and countervailing measures from the EU."

Supreme grief

Trump was the first presidential candidate to commit to nominate a Supreme Court justice from a list of judges released before the election. Aaron Streett, a partner in the Houston headquarters of Baker Botts, forecast the new president will be under "intense pressure" to select one of the conservative judges on that list to replace Justice Scalia after his death last February.

If Trump does not keep his promise, said Streett, "he will open an immediate rift with many conservatives who supported his candidacy primarily because of the importance of nominating conservative Justices to the Supreme Court".

Who will be the attorney?

When it came to speculating on the justice policy of a Trump administration and the question of who will succeed Loretta Lynch as the US attorney-general, lawyers dived for cover.

There was broad media speculation that Rudy Giuliani – the former mayor of New York who took a break from the partnership at Greenberg Traurig to get stuck into the Trump campaign – had an inside track on the post. However, none of the transatlantic law firms or the London offices of US law firms was keen to speculate on names.

See Blue Bag diary and tweet of the day below

Hundreds of families with a severely disabled adult or child living at home will be spared the effects of the “bedroom tax” after a Supreme Court ruling, reports Rosemary Bennett in The Times.

Judges ruled that the government had discriminated against a disabled woman and her husband and, separately, grandparents with a severely disabled grandson when it cut their benefits.

Since April 2013 families in social housing who have a spare bedroom have had their housing benefit reduced by 14 per cent and those with two or more spare rooms by 25 per cent. The aim was to encourage moves to smaller properties, but about half a million families had their benefits docked because they wanted to stay in their home or could not find a suitable property.

The judgment found that the government acted unlawfully against Jacqueline Carmichael, 44, who has spina bifida, and her husband and full-time carer, Jayson. Mrs Carmichael needs a special hospital-type bed in her bedroom with an electronic pressure mattress designed to fit a single hospital bed. She has to sleep in a fixed position and cannot share a bed with her husband. There is no space for an additional bed in the room and so they need a two-bedroom flat.

Problems around the house-buying process led the league table of complaints about the legal profession for the third year running.

Residential conveyancing, which is predominantly conducted by high street solicitors’ firms, clocked up about 20 per cent of all complaints to the Legal Services Ombudsman in 2015-16. But the number in that field was slightly down on the previous year.

The next highest single category of complaints involved family law cases, which accounted for slightly less than 15 per cent of the total.

However, family law complaints have dropped considerably over the past four years. In 2012-13 they formed nearly 20 per cent of the total.

The ombudsman’s report showed that personal injury cases and general litigation were the two remaining significant causes of complaints. Overall, the number of complaints against lawyers of all types sunk to its lowest level since the ombudsman opened for business in 2010.

Over the past year the ombudsman’s office accepted 7,033 cases for investigation, down from more than 8,300 in 2012-13.

The watchdog reported that its budget fell for the fifth year running, down by nearly 5 per cent over the last year, from £12.2 million to £11.6 million. According to a statement from the ombudsman, that fall reflected “ongoing efficiency improvements across the business”.

Lingering patriarchal tendencies in British business and the “motherhood penalty” are the reasons women will spend the rest of the year working for nothing, a leading employment lawyer claimed yesterday.

Seizing on “equal pay day”, Karen Jackson, the founder of Didlaw, a niche employment practice in London, claimed that owing to the UK’s gender pay gap, the UK’s female workforce will effectively be working salary-free until the end of the year compared with its male counterpart.

“The motherhood penalty is one very obvious reason,” she said, claiming that “it is a fact that most women’s careers and pay will suffer damage if they have kids. The same does not happen to men because most men don’t take time out to raise their children.”

Jackson also lashed out at the “vestiges of patriarchal attitudes” in UK businesses. “How is it possible that female graduates going into teaching have lower salaries?” she asked, claiming that the position was similar for health professionals despite it being a profession dominated by women.

“There are still systemic problems,” said Jackson, “most notably the majority role of men on company boards and outdated – male – perceptions which are also endorsed by women who grew up in the old system”.

Demand for legal services at the top US law firms has continued to slide, recently released figures show, while fee rates inch up.

The volume of instructions fell by slightly more than 1 per cent in the third quarter of the year compared with the previous three months, according to figures from Thomson Reuters. That means that over the year so far, demand for services is 0.3 per cent down on last year.

Nonetheless – or perhaps causing the slide – fee rates at the larger US firms increased during the last quarter by more than 3 per cent.

Deal departments at large law firms turned in patchy figures, the researchers said. “Transactional practices, which have largely been a bellwether for the market, turned in a mixed-to-weak performance,” according to the report.

Corporate work rose 0.5 per cent and is up 0.5 per cent over the year-to-date. But real estate fell 1.7 per cent and is down 0.9 per cent over the year-to-date, while tax work dropped 2 per cent and is down by nearly the same figure over the year-to-date.

Litigation was down by nearly 2 per cent over the quarter – its weakest performance this year, according to the report – and is down 1.4 on the year-to-date.

In today’s Times law …

• How Trump will shape the US Supreme Court
  
• Unpaid work – a ‘crucial pillar of justice’
  
• Press freedom is too important to be subject to official regulation, argues Lord Pannick, QC
  
• Remembering the needs of present-day veterans
  
• Shareholder activism – what’s on the agenda?
  
• A year on – deferred prosecutions in action
  
• Lawyer of the week: Richard Kovalevsky, QC
  
• Edward Fennell’s law diary: Trump rules
  
• Gary Slapper’s weird cases: Casino payouts are a gamble
  
• Law reports: Leaving EU a matter for parliament

Elsewhere …

• 'Uneven and unpredictable' is City law firm leaders view of Trump – Legal Week
  
• Female lawyers fear “Trump effect” – Legal Futures
  
• More turbulance at King & Wood Mallesons as top boss stands down – The Lawyer
  
• Armistice Day scuppered by EU safety law – The Times