Strong half-year sales growth for DWF

MERGERS have helped law firm DWF achieve half-year income growth of 39%.

The Manchester, Liverpool and Preston firm, which also has offices in the North East, Yorkshire and West Midlands, said turnover grew to £59m in the six months to October.

Since last November the firm has acquired Scotland-based Biggart Baillie, Crutes in the North East and Buller Jeffries in the Midlands. The firm now employs 1,800 staff in 11 locations. Like-for-like revenue was up 7.6% during the period.

Managing partner and chief executive Andrew Leaitherland said: “It would have been easy for us to stand still this year, but we made a conscious decision to seize an opportunity and grow. Quite simply, we will be successful by improving standards and by raising the bar around client service. If we get that right our clients will prosper and so will we.
 
“The people at DWF are ultimately the reason behind our success and we are committed to a strategy of continual reinvestment that will see investments made in both our legal experts and business support teams.”

He added: “We have ambitions to be a top 20 law firm by 2015 and our strong internal values, talented people, and commitment to working closely with our expanding portfolio of clients means we have a solid platform to build on and meet these targets.”

DWF said recruitment grew by 11% during the period with the creation of 200 positions. In the year to April 30 the firm reported a 21% increase in net profit and a 24% rise in revenues to £102m. Profit per equity partner was over £415,000 for the first time in the firm’s history.