Deal activity raises opportunities and expectations for law firms
LEEDS’ largest law firms are going from strength to strength on the back of a continued recovery in corporate and real estate activity.
Recently there has been an acceleration in the rate of improvement with a higher level of deal activity helping to generate more spin-off work for firms.
Squire Patton Boggs, which operates a calendar year-end for its American parent and an April year-end for its UK partnership, said turnover had increased by 10% so far in 2015 but was up 25% in the opening months of its 2016 financial year, against a benchmark of year-on-year growth in terms of turnover of around 5%.
“The market is strong and getting stronger,” said John Alderton. “That is driven by a lot of corporate activity – it then spins out into tax work, banking work and real estate.”
Paul Cotton, Leeds’ office managing partner at Eversheds, described his own firm’s first-quarter performance as “incredible” and believed the positivity was not isolated to just a couple of firms in the region.
“The Leeds legal market is doing extremely well – extremely well,” he said. “It is now a market that has expectations and opportunities. Maybe it’s just my view of life – I’m more of a half-full than half-empty person – but we have faced challenges over the last few years and dealt with those challenges. We now see a lot of opportunities.
“We have come through it and are growing and growing and growing. Our first quarter figures are just incredible.”
He added: “The huge successes over the last 12-18 months have been built around a very strong corporate practice and real estate. If you have a strong corporate team, everything else flows from that.
“The investment has been in the four core teams – corporate, real estate, employment and pensions – and these are the four teams that make the Leeds office spin.”
Walker Morris, which has also benefitted from the uplift in corporate activity, said it is seeing improvements following investments it has made in the last couple of years.
Ian Gilbert said: “We don’t go for growth in the context of trying to grow bigger and bigger and bigger. We have moved out of volume areas like PI and focused on the advisory.
“Our turnover will look flat, there’s a minor increase, but we have reshaped the pack. We have grown our higher value-add areas.
“The underlying growth of the business is more like 5%.”
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