Specialist divorce law firm to set up in London

James Brown and Sam Hall

A Manchester-based family law firm, which counts high profile footballers and WAGs among its clients, is to open an office in London less than two years after its launch.

Hall Brown Family Law, which specialises in divorce cases, was founded by lawyers Sam Hall and James Brown less than 18 months ago but they are already planning the opening of their second office in the first quarter of 2018 – and have set their sights on the capital.

The firm recorded turnover of £1.3m in its first financial year and has seen a dramatic expansion in staff numbers to 21 (14 of which are fee earners). Turnover for the current financial year to April 2018 is expected to fall between £1.7m-£2m.

The King Street-headquartered firm dealt with more than 260 cases in its first year with many based in London or involving overseas jurisdictions.

As well as Stacey Giggs, wife of the former Manchester United player and caretaker-manager, Ryan, notable Hall Brown clients have included the ex-Spurs and Newcastle United French international David Ginola.

According to Hall and Brown, around 35% of the firm’s fee income originates from London. They say that’s because clients know they can get the expertise of lawyers used to working on high profile, high value cases without paying London prices.

To that end the pair want to transpose their ‘Manchester model’ to shake up the London market.

Hall said: “We want to bring our Manchester values to London – our absolute straight talking and saying to our clients ‘we will come to you’, which those in London do not do – I think some don’t realise that we are a service industry. We would be moving the best of Manchester to London to shake up the market.

“The London market can keep its oligarchs – we will not take those from the table. In Manchester our bread and butter is a decent case for someone on £100,000 salary – there are thousands of those people in London who cannot afford a £750 charge rate. We’d say to the London firms, send those cases our way.”

Hall and Brown expect the new London office to be based on or around the Strand or High Holborn.

They admit their London rates would have to increase somewhat to reflect the higher costs but insist that London charges do not have to be hugely dissimilar to current Manchester rates.

Brown said: “We charge out at £295 an hour – compared to people of our level at top tier London firms, we are very competitive. It compares to a rate of £580 up to £750 in London.

“We are not opening in London to rocket our charge rate – we would keep it the about same. We think it is preposterous that people pay that charge out rate.

“The choices are to pay that rate in London or go out to the regions – that is the market for high end divorce services like ours – but we want to change that.”

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