Prizewinners from Debevoise and Slaughter’s

Awarded annually to an ‘aspiring trainee’, as the organizers put it, the competition has really struck gold this year, the Legal Diary notes. Rather than a single victor the judges found they had to make a joint award such was the inseparability of Christina Newall, a Trainee Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton and Linda Worden, a Trainee Solicitor at Slaughter and May (although only Linda Worden could actually attend the ceremony).

Whatever it was Newall and Worden got it right. London attracts business, Newell contended, not because it eliminates risk but because it enables risk to be priced, allocated and enforced on known terms. She pointed to recent reforms, including the Arbitration Act 2025 and the Property (Digital Assets etc.) Act 2025, as evidence of a legal system giving innovation a stable foundation.  

Meanwhile Worden argued that it is the Rule of Law in its broader cultural sense that sustains the City’s standing. In other words ‘integrity’ she argued, is more than an SRA principle. The probity and responsibility of practitioners matters whether ‘flagging a poorly redacted document’ or ‘disclosing what is adverse to a client’s case’.