Prince William hired the same lawyers Princess Diana used in her divorce from King Charles III, but there’s no need to worry about the state of his marriage to Kate Middleton quite yet.
William is breaking away from the legal team that has been representing the British royal family for decades in a move that has more to do with his father, King Charles, than his marriage.
Daily Mail reports that Prince William dropped King Charles’ longtime legal team — Harbottle & Lewis and its partner, Gerrard Tyrrell — with whom he has also worked throughout his adulthood. Instead, he is now represented by Mishcon de Reya, the legal firm that represented his mother when her divorce from then-Prince Charles in 1996, a year before she died in a car accident.
The firm, which handles a lot more than just divorces, will now represent William in many legal areas. The move does not appear to be a sign of trouble in his marriage to Middleton.
William wanted to strike out on his own. He did not want to continue using his father’s lawyers. It’s as simple as that. He wants to be his own man,” one source told the Daily Mail.
Another source, described as a “friend” of the Prince, added, “William wants to do things differently from his father and wants to be seen to do them differently.
Dropping Harbottle & Lewis, the firm that most famously represented the royal in the 2006 News of the World phone-hacking scandal, is the latest in William’s efforts to forge his own path within the monarchy. As he described it to the BBC in November 2024, “I can only describe what I’m trying to do, and that’s I’m trying to do it differently and I’m trying to do it for my generation.”
“And to give you more an understanding around it,” he added. “I’m doing it with maybe a smaller ‘R’ in the royal, if you like, that’s maybe a better way of saying it.”
