That was then, this is now

Allen & Overy (A&O), Ashurst and Addleshaw Goddard recently topped a table of graduate employers in a major survey of law students' views on which firms are the best to work for. They may be household brands these days - well, for houses containing lawyers and law students - but it wasn't always this way.

International: Allen & Overy

The words 'Allen & Overy' conjure images of elite 'magic circle' lawyers and glass and steel offices - the sense of corporate glamour heightened by the firm's recruitment earlier this year of Prince Harry's ex, Chelsy Davy, who is due to begin her training contract in September.

It wasn't always like this, though. A&O was founded on 1 January, 1930 by George Allen and Thomas Overy - starting out with a dozen staff in a small office in the City of London. Six years later, the firm got its big break when Allen was hired to advise King Edward VIII during the abdication crisis - a dramatic period that would lead to the monarch giving up his throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

Reportedly nicknamed 'Poker Face' by Edward, Allen set "standards of commercialism, professionalism, pragmatism and innovation", as the A&O website puts it. Ably assisted by the lower-profile Overy, he put the firm on the road to corporate law megastardom - with both men later bagging knighthoods for their achievements.

From then on the firm went from strength to strength, advising on the first ever hostile takeover in the City of London, drafting the first ever Eurobond in the 1960s, before opening up its first international office in 1978. Today, A&O has offices in 22 different countries and, in 2008, recorded a turnover of over £1bn.

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City: Ashurst

The establishment of a future City heavyweight doesn't appear to have been part of the plan when William Ashurst, a well known radical non-conformist, founded the firm in 1822. Not really the corporate type, Ashurst spent most of his time campaigning for electoral reform and the abolition of taxes on newspapers, leaving succeeding partners John Morris and Sir Frank Crisp to put the firm on course to becoming the leading commercial player it is today.

Steering away from the worthy stuff favoured by his former boss, John Morris got stuck into a host of cutting-edge projects, including the construction of the subterranean rail experience that we know today as the Circle Line. Proudly high-tech, Morris was responsible for Ashurst becoming the first law firm to connect to the telephone network. Their number? An easy on the fingers 15.

Finally came smooth-talking eccentric Sir Frank Crisp. When well-connected Crisp wasn't raising the firm's profile assisting clients such as the Asquith Government (he composed the Attorney General's statement to the House of Commons in the wake of the 1913 Marconi scandal), he was hard at work in the garden of his Henley home, Friar Park. The centrepiece of Crisp's backyard was a four-acre rockery that rose to form a 30ft scale model of the Matterhorn beneath which lay a cave containing over 100 gnomes.

It subsequently proved the inspiration for George Harrison's 1970 song, 'The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp', in which the late former Beatle (a subsequent Friar Park resident) reflects on the state his predecessor left the garden in.

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Addleshaw Goddard was formed in 2003 by the merger of self-styled 'Firm of the North' Addleshaw Booth & Co and City outfit Theodore Goddard. Itself the product of a merger, Addleshaw Booth & Co can trace its roots all the way back to 18th century Leeds.

By comparison, Theodore Goddard, established in the Temple area of London in 1902, is a mere youth. The firm's big break came in 1936 with - you guessed it - the King Edward VIII abdication crisis. While A&O's George Allen was advising the King, firm founder Theodore Goddard was instructed to assist Wallis Simpson.

However, in 1941 disaster struck - quite literally - when Theodore Goddard's offices were destroyed during a Blitz air raid, along with most of its records. But the firm soldiered on, rebuilding itself on a diet of increasingly corporate and commercial-focused work, relocating to new premises in the City in 1965. During this period, the firm merged with several smaller outfits, including Rhys Roberts & Co, founded in 1883 by future Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

As the 1970s gathered pace, Theodore Goddard developed a strong media and entertainment law practice - doing work for The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and, more recently, Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Jackson. During the last few years Addleshaw Goddard has regularly been named as a Sunday Times 'best company to work for', although missed out on the most recent list.

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