How it started
Establishment
Neal Lawson, Ben Lucas and Jonathan Mendelsohn were former advisers to Labour Party's newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair and ex-employees of the Lowe Bell public relations business of Margaret Thatcher's three-time campaign adviser Sir Tim Bell. Lucas had also previously advised Jack Straw from 1992 to 1996.
LLM was set up as Ibis (351) Ltd by the law firm Titmuss Sainer Dechert in February 1997, before being renamed to Lawson Lucas Mendelsohn and handed over to Mendelsohn in May 1997; Lucas and Lawson joined six weeks later. The company was launched as a "breakaway agency" from Bell against the background of Labour's landslide electoral victory of May 1997, exploiting peak demand for mediation between the business sector and the regulatory ambitions of the new government.
The firm's mission statement "The Passing World and The Emerging World" promised to bring an "ethical" dimension to lobbying, while replacing "ideology" with "pragmatism" and "what you do" with "how you do it". Its business model involved "reshaping corporate culture" and greenwashing practices as part of a bid for political favours. The founders, self-confessed Blairites, declared the company would not lobby in "politically or morally indefensible" interests, among which they named the tobacco industry and gun manufacturers seeking the liberalisation of the British firearms regulation. Shortly after its establishment, LLM took on the job of advising RSPCA's Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals in support of Labour MP Michael Foster's unsuccessful bill proposal against fox hunting.
The firm received £2 million in earnings from its first year of operations.
Lobbygate
From Wikipedia’s article on LLM Communications, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2