fp Turks and Caicos

Providenciales lawyer and businessman Clive Stanbrook, who retired from local law firm Misick & Stanbrook in 2005, has asked that his name be removed from the firm name, but the firm has not agreed.

Instead, the firm issued a press release May 9 stating that Stanbrook — who has been “counsel emeritus” since 2005, meaning he was available to the firm for consultation — has ended that last link to the firm.

Stanbrook formed his first law firm called Stanbrook and Hooper in Brussels in 1977, working in European and international trade law. He became a partner in Misick & Stanbrook in 1986.

In 2005 Stanbrook and Hooper merged with an American law firm, and he became a partner in the firm now called McDermott Will & Emery/Stanbrook LLP, where he is head of the firm’s European Union Regulatory practice and a member of the Global Competition and Trade groups.

“As part of the condition of MWE/S taking over and retaining me, I had to agree to relinquish all my connections with Misick & Stanbrook,” Stanbrook told the fp.

“All firms change in terms of their character and direction, and I thought the time had come for me to disassociate myself from Misick & Stanbrook,” Stanbrook said of the announcement. “People were constantly telling me that they thought I must still be part of Misick & Stanbrook, and I frankly thought that the record should be set straight.”

“I asked that the name be changed because I did not want people to be misled, but the partners didn’t want to change the name on the basis that it had become something of a trademark for them,” he said. “The compromise was that a press release should be issued to declare that despite my name being retained by the firm, everyone should know I was no longer a part of it.”

Stanbrook said he is hopeful the firm’s partners will eventually remove his name from the firm name.

Current partners in the firm are Ariel Misick, Conrad Griffiths, Owen Foley and Gordon Kerr.