Articles From the Team

Just call me Mrs Clooney...

Today it's been announced that Amal Alamuddin on her return to work has changed her name to Mrs Clooney, well to be precise Amal Alamuddin Clooney. The 'about the team' section of the Doughty Street Chambers website  had crashed when I looked earlier and the move has sparked huge debate on the morning news shows and across social media .

We've had quite a few weddings at BCL Legal over the last few years and whilst our more recent brides chose to take their new husbands name on their return we still have quite a number of ladies who keep their maiden name for professional purposes.

This article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2357789/Third-married-women-twenties-maiden-names-experts-claim-embracing-feminism.html tells of a survey by facebook of some 33 million UK users. It looks at the number of women who take their husbands name once married and determines that a woman is more likely to change her name the older she is on her wedding day. In her twenties a woman has a 62% likelihood of a name change, rising to 74% in her thirties and 88% in her sixties.

Whilst I'm in the 'changed name' camp, we have plenty of people who didn't take the plunge, their reasons are very similar when discussed and come down to the fact that they are very experienced legal recruiters and their clients, candidates and people in their professional network know them as one name already and they didn't see any benefit of introducing another name into their already busy working day.

There have been a few hiccups along the way, travel bookings are always met with "what is your REAL name" (meaning the name on your passport) after a near miss with a flight booking but I'm sure Mrs Clooney won't have that problem in the office.

For more information please contact BCL Legal or call 0845 241 0933.