bitchy | Prince William hired Princess Diana’s old divorce lawyers as his new legal counsel

In 2016-2018, Prince Harry consulted with lawyers from Farrer & Co, the long-time, long-serving law firm to the crown. Those lawyers did not give Harry very good advice, especially when it came to dealing with a rabid media-and-palace-generated smear campaign against Meghan. It wasn’t until 2019 that Harry began speaking to lawyers outside of Farrery & Co (QEII’s lawyers) and Harbottle & Lewis (Charles’s lawyers). Elton John was apparently the one who suggested that Harry hire his own lawyer (away from the royal conflicts of interest) and Elton likely introduced Harry to David Sherborne. Sherborne has represented Harry since 2019 and Sherborne had gone to the mattresses on Harry’s behalf, especially in regards to Harry’s media lawsuits.

One of the big criticisms of Harry’s actions in hiring Sherborne was that “it simply isn’t done” and “Harry should have stuck with his grandmother’s lawyers” and “why can’t he simply not sue the media outlets who have special arrangements with various royal houses?” I bring this up because the Copykeen Brother has now hired a different law firm to handle of his peggy business. Prince William has actually hired the law firm Princess Diana went to when she sought a divorce from Charles: Mishcon de Reya.

When Princess Diana was beset with worries in 1995 that she would be killed in a staged car accident, she voiced her fears to the man she trusted most, her lawyer Lord Mishcon. His firm, Mishcon de Reya, handled her highly acrimonious divorce from Prince Charles, which was finalised the following year. After the Princess died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 alongside Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul, Lord Mishcon passed his contemporaneously typed-up account of his meeting with Diana to senior Metropolitan Police officers who put it in a safe. But the note was not passed to French authorities investigating her crash for six years.

The Princess’s brother and sisters did not learn of its existence for more than a decade after it was written. Princes William and Harry were also left in the dark for a long time. At his meeting with police chiefs the month after Diana’s death, Lord Mishcon (who died in 2006) read his note aloud to stress its importance. He told officers that it recorded Diana saying ‘efforts would be made if not to get rid of her by some accident in her car, such as a pre-prepared brake failure, at least to see that she was so injured or damaged as to be declared unbalanced [in her mind]’.

I can disclose that, in a remarkable turn of events, Prince William has now turned to Diana’s lawyers again. The heir to the throne has instructed Mishcon de Reya to act for him and his family, in a break with tradition. William has previously been represented by King Charles’s lawyers, Harbottle & Lewis, in particular its partner, Gerrard Tyrrell.

‘William wanted to strike out on his own,’ a source tells me. ‘He did not want to continue using his father’s lawyers. It’s as simple as that. He wants to be his own man.’

A Kensington Palace spokesman declined to comment, but the instruction is the talk of legal circles. It is said to have disappointed Harbottle & Lewis, which has represented the Royal Family for decades. Media law specialist Tyrrell is one of the King’s most trusted advisers.

But William’s move will have delighted Mishcon and its deputy chairman Anthony Julius, who was chosen by Diana as her legal representative when she divorced Charles. Julius continued to work with William as one of the founding trustees of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and was vice-president until it closed in 2012.

William’s decision is being seen at Buckingham Palace as the latest example of his desire to follow a different path from that of his father. Of course, his inheritance of the vast Duchy of Cornwall estate when Charles ascended the throne in 2022 means that money is no object. Valued at more than £1billion, the estate includes more than 200 square miles of land in over 23 counties and provides William with an annual income of at least £20million.

‘William wants to do things differently from his father, and wants to be seen to do them differently,’ a friend tells me. This was made clear in 2023 when William chose to give a major interview to a national newspaper that was published the day after Trooping the Colour. It meant that coverage of the King’s first birthday parade was overshadowed by his heir’s declaration that he planned to end homelessness. William’s decision to branch out from his father’s legal advisers shows that he is more than willing to shake up the status quo behind palace doors as well.

[From The Daily Mail]

I mean, it makes for a good headline: Prince William hires law firm which handled his mother’s divorce! It really makes you think, and this would have been HUGE news one year ago. Mishcon de Reya is full-service though, they don’t just do divorce cases and family law, they do everything. Diana adored her lawyers. Anyway, the Other Brother is his “own man,” that’s why he’s hiring a different law firm, just like Harry! Notice how William won’t be criticized at all for this either, not like Harry was for hiring Sherborne. Now, I know I give William a lot of sh-t – all of which he deserves – but it’s honestly a good idea for William to have legal counsel separate from his father’s. Conflicts of interest abound, which is what Harry discovered all of those years ago.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.