JMW seeks more commercial hires as income jumps 20%
AMBITIOUS law firm JMW is confident of continued growth after revealing a 20% jump in fee income to £13.2m .
Profits in the year to the end of April were up by more than 30%, the firm said.
Managing partner Bill Jones said the “excellent” figures were the result of a number of major hires in the last 18 months and also investtment in staff training and marketing.
Mr Jones said much progress had been made to “rebalance” the Manchester firm by beefing-up its commercial departments and said JMW is looking to do more of this.
He ruled out a merger, stating: “That is not our strategy – the approaches we get are either from bigger firms swallowing us up – and we don’t want to be swallowed, or for other firms looking for us to bail them out – which in this climate is also not at all attractive.
“We want to be a balanced full-service firm and we’d like to strengthen further in litigation, commercial property and corporate – but only if we can get the right people who will fit with our culture.”
Mr Jones said he had changed his mind about retirement stating: “We had discussed the possibility (of retirement), but I am as excited as I have ever been and I am going to stay on indefinitely.
“A recession is not a good time for major change in the business, I think stability is needed.”
He said the firm’s recent success – since 2008 fee income has grown 80% from £8m to £13.2m – was not just about him, as he paid tribute to the impact senior partner Joy Kingsley has had since joining from Pannone in 2010.
“Joy is phenomenal, we’ve worked hard at working together and we’re a very, very good combination and our results speak for themselves.”
Based on Byrom Street in the Spinningfields business district JMW has 200 staff and 34 partners.
The fastest-growing areas of the firm in the past year were employmentm whci saw a growth in fee income of 229%, followed by family up 69%.
Corporate recovery was 32% and both commercial property and commercial litigation showing 14% rises.
The firm’s largest department, personal injury enjoyed a 24% rise in fee income, while private client grew by 12%. The most profitable department was clinical negligence run by partner Eddie Jones.
Among its recent recruits are: Ian Tranter, Beth Wilkins and Catherine Jones (all from Pannone); Chris Moss jined as head of corporate from Pinsent Masons; Mark Davies (Insolvency) from DWF, Keith Arrowsmith (IP) from Ralli and Carl Moran (Employment) from Nexus.
