Income and profits rise at law firm

ANNUAL turnover at law firm Ward Hadaway has risen by more than 7%, with growth across all of its practice areas and offices.

The law firm, which has offices in Leeds, Mancheste 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.

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.”