‘City lawyer’ sells house to George Lucas for £40m

_{Take the curtain poles with him he will.}

A lawyer has enjoyed a terrific windfall after selling their mansion to Star Wars creator George Lucas, it has been reported.

Lucas, who has a net worth in excess of $5 billion, purchased a home in posh St John’s Wood in an off-market deal in September, fuelling rumours that he’s planning to quit the US for London.

Of interest to RollOnFriday is the seller, who is reported to be a prominent lawyer. They will presumably be delighted at having bucked the trend in the UK residential property market, which has seen estate agents struggling to shift high-value homes despite slashing prices.

Lucas’s property portfolio includes a $28m compound in California and his 2,500-acre Skywalker Ranch, which features a 26-acre vineyard, Wagyu cattle, a cinema and Lake Ewok.

The prospect of a mansion in St John's Wood being renamed Darth Villa is one thing, but what ROF really wants to know is the identity of the seller. We’ve approached Lucas who is sure to respond shortly, but in the meantime if you spot a senior lawyer walking around in gold-plated Mandalorian armour, please let us know.

It wouldn't be Lucas's first productive use of lawyers in the UK - a decade ago he instructed them to stamp down on knock-off Stormtrooper helmets. And woe betide any neighbour he spots building an X-Wing.

Use the Force and also your fingers to rate how satisfied you are at your firm in RollOnFriday's Best Law Firms to Work At 2026 survey :

The RollOnFriday Newsletter

Comments

These are the sort of immigrants who shouldn't be allowed in.

Anyone who could make The Phantom Menace and The Rise of Skywalker must be guilty of terrible crimes.

I know a former city lawyer who had a big house in St John’s Wood, it must be worth around £40m. He left London a long time ago although he kept working as a partner for a big city firm, in their Singapore office and rented out his London pad to an American hedge fund guy as I recall. I was the ex-partner of a colleague of his, and so knew him from his firm’s social gatherings. One of them was at his Singapore house, which is one of the most expensive in Singapore, must be USD40m for that one. He left his firm a while ago as I remember.

I don't know if he is the mystery seller….

Ooooh. Drop us a line, anon 8.57, on an anonymous basis... [email protected]

Time to start charging capital gains on high value properties

"I AM YOUR NEIGHBOUR."

I dunno about good-plated Mandalorain armour Jamie but last time I saw the guy who I reckon is same guy anon 8.57 remembers he was driving a million dollar Aston Martin (car prices in Singapore = 4 times UK). No idea if he owned a property in St John’s Wood.

I once had a chance to look at a distribution list from the early 2000s for a big deal which my firm did around then (back when you had to include your home address and landline, just in case). The majority of the partners either owned enormous estates in Virginia Water or rural Buckinghamshire, or townhouses in Kensington, Chelsea or St John's Wood. These days, despite PEP increasing quite a bit since then, most partners live in Zones 2 or 3, in nice but perfectly inconspicuous houses.

Long story short, it's very interesting to see how law (even at the partner level) has become simultaneously better-paid and less lucrative. Now it feels like a good way to get a decently middle-class life, whereas a few decades ago being a top partner could give you a lifestyle which wouldn't have been wholly incommensurate to Hollywood directors.