Kidnapping Hoax With Prison Ending for Biglaw Partner

Oh, What a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive,” said Judge Guy Anthony, quoting Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion as he sentenced British Biglaw attorney Francis Bridgeman to 12 months in prison on Friday.

The former Allen & Overy (A&O) and Macfarlanes partner, who had already had his membership of the latter firm’s limited liability partnership terminated, then collapsed in the dock.

Until recently, Bridgeman, 43, was just another hotshot Biglaw equity partner enjoying a millionaire’s life-style. Educated at Oxford University, he joined Magic Circle firm A&O in the early 1990s and rose through the ranks so quickly that he made partner in 2000, aged just 32. Having got married, he bought a big house in the countryside outside London and became a governor at a local school. Three years ago, he capitalised on his success by moving to boutique financial law firm Macfarlanes, where profit per equity partner is still high for U.K. standards (last year it came in at £752,000) but the hours and stress are generally considered less than at the likes of A&O.

Then, on April 6 2010, everything changed for Bridgeman, in the most unexpected and surreal way….

After work that day, the bank restructuring specialist went out drinking with colleagues near his office in London, sinking five pints of Guinness, before getting the train back to the country town near where he lived. Despite being drunk, he got in his car — which as usual he’d left in the parking lot that morning — and set out on the last leg of his journey. On the way, he crashed into a telephone pole. Fearful of the consequences, Bridgeman abandoned his car and set out on foot for home, walking for three hours across fields to get there.

A few hours later, police spotted Bridgeman’s Range Rover in a ditch, traced it to his address, and arrived to interview him. At which point Bridgeman elected to try and cover up his actions by inventing an extraordinary tale. He claimed that he’d been kidnapped by a group of armed men in the station as he got into his car, then driven at knifepoint with a bag over his head in another vehicle before being dumped in a wood.

But a breath test that showed alcohol was still present in Bridgeman’s system as he told this yarn aroused police suspicions, which were heightened when they found CCTV footage of the drunken lawyer stumbling through London Bridge station hours before the supposed kidnap. The case against him was complete when his DNA was found on the airbag in his car, showing that he must have been driving it when it crashed.

Source: AbovetheLaw