Income hits £35m at Ward Hadaway

TURNOVER at law firm Ward Hadaway has risen by more than 7% in the last year, with growth across all of its practice areas and offices.

The law firm, which has offices in Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle and which employs more than 450 people across the north, saw annual income rise by 7.2% to a record £35.8m in the year to the end of April 2016.

In the North West there was particularly marked growth in its Property and Litigation departments, which saw a rise in fee income of 8.1% and 6.7% respectively.

Across the firm as a whole, all five of Ward Hadaway’s departments – Litigation, Private Client, Corporate, Commercial and Property – grew fee income during the course of the year.

The growth in income was matched with a tight control on costs with the firm’s like-for-like profit margin rising to 32.2% and net debt reduced by 80.8%.

Jamie Martin, Ward Hadaway managing partner, said: “These are exceptionally good results for the firm, especially taking into consideration the fact that competition in the legal marketplace has arguably never been greater.

“Apart from excellent headline figures, what is most pleasing about these results is the fact that we are seeing growth right across the board and in all three of our office locations.

“We are proud to be a northern based law firm for national business and we have long believed that the key to our continued growth lies in our ability to operate across the north in line with the Government’s Northern Powerhouse initiative and provide high quality legal support to companies, individuals and organisations across the country.

“I believe these latest results demonstrate the success of this approach and are a real tribute to the hard work, dedication and expertise of our people and the vision, determination and ambition of our clients.

“We will continue to invest in developing and recruiting talented, hard-working lawyers as we look to build further on our well-established track record of sustained success, which has now seen the firm grow by over 25% in the last five years alone.”

The Litigation team in the firm’s Manchester office was strengthened during the course of the year with the recruitment of commercial litigation partner Elaine Chan from BLM LLP and employment partner Stephen Robinson from Laytons.

As well as recruiting a number of experienced lawyers, Ward Hadaway’s Manchester office was also involved in some important deals during the course of the past year, including the relocation of self-catering holiday specialist Eurocamp’s headquarters and the multi-million pound sale of Matalan’s northern distribution warehouse.

Jamie Martin said: “Our Manchester office may be the newest of our three centres across the north, having opened in summer 2012, but it is already more than proving its worth less than four years since it was established in what is a highly competitive marketplace.

“We will be looking to add further to the team in Manchester during the course of the next 12 months as we continue our investment in high quality legal expertise to our expanding client base.

“Whilst we are very pleased with these latest financial results, we remain vigilant and we will continue to keep a close eye on costs and on the marketplace as we look to build further on our success.”