Schillings appeared to be having some difficulty this week as it cancelled its graduate recruitment programme, told its new joiners not to turn up, and has said goodbye to one of its top partners.

Schillings must have serious doubts about the state of the market for servicing litigious rich people as it has told the students who were due to turn up for training contracts in three months that they're out of a job. Nice. Meanwhile, it has cancelled its grad rec programme and all reference to it has been removed from the firm's website.

And this doesn't seem to be the end of the Schilling's woes - high profile partner Gideon Benaim has resigned and is on gardening leave. Although at the time of writing he remained on the firm's website.

Gideon Benaim relaxing in his garden yesterday

Benaim is most famous for relieving Ryan Giggs of a lot of money in order to ensure that, err, the entire world found out  about his sexual exploits. And for going after publishers for massive success fees when acting for such deserving causes as Naomi Campbell. After Keith Schilling he's the most famous partner at the firm and his departure is a big blow to the firm.

No one from Schillings would comment when RollOnFriday raised these issues, and the firm's press office failed to return numerous subsequent calls.