Opportunities in Birmingham
Professional life in the second city is far from second class these days. Birmingham’s top law firms enjoy a sophistication of work and quality of client they could only have dreamt of a decade ago.
Although the corporate market may have experienced a bit of al lull recently, the city’s leading lawyers routinely handle deals and disputes valued in the hundreds of millions of pounds. The range of specialist legal services offered has expanded exponentially in the past 5 years as the leading firms have exploited their lower cost bases to win work from their more expensive London rivals.
The legal sector employs 17,000 people in the city, generating £500m a year in legal fees, and the local Law Society, through its “Advised in Birmingham” campaign, intends to increase these figures significantly.
“National clients are more confident about choosing Birmingham to provide legal services where previously they would have chosen the City,” says a local managing partner. “Birmingham can offer its lawyers access to high value, complex quality work for large clients.”
This, inevitably, creates legal opportunities for London lawyers keen to escape the rat race – only the most esoteric practice areas are likely to prove too rarefied for the city’s ‘big five’ – DLA Piper, Eversheds, Hammonds, Pinsents Masons and Wragge & Co. The majority of recruits to the top tier firms come predominantly from top 20 London firms with the rest transferring from other national firms and the occasional specialist promotion from the middle tier.
These firms’ growing sophistication, however, means that finding a home at one of them is no longer the walk in the park it might have been for lawyers with experience in the capital. “Some London lawyers think they will have a red carpet rolled out for them,” says a local recruiter. “But the standards of the leading firms, and increasingly the middle tier, means that there needs to be a clear business case before they will recruit even the best lawyers.”
Nevertheless, there are plenty of legal opportunities, not least because the death of big deals experienced by the national firms in the early years of the decade led some to shed lawyers, which has had the effect of making those who remain a little more reluctant to change jobs. The one reservation that many Midlands law firms have about London lawyers is their frequent lack of client relationship skills and, as local recruiters point out, the most successful regional lawyers are those that can combine both client relationship skills with technical ability. The more client contact you can claim the better.
Your chances of persuading the leading West Midlands law firms to take you on will also be significantly enhanced if you have property, planning or construction experience (the region has been undergoing an extensive programme of regeneration in recent years). Tax lawyers may find themselves popular too. Birmingham is home to some of the country’s leading pensions practices, which are constantly on the look out for recruits and even corporate lawyers are coming back into demand amongst the leading firms as the slump in big deals gradually comes to an end.
As ever, the optimum point to switch firms (especially if you’re moving from London) or to move in-house, is between 2 and 5 years after qualification. This is regarded as the point in your career where you’re experienced enough to make a serious contribution without requiring too much compensation in return.
Above this level, a client following would be expected - something which lawyers from leading City firms are unlikely to be able to provide. The salary gap between associates in London and Birmingham – approximately £30K – becomes a bit of a psychological chasm too, even if the difference in the cost of living makes the material difference negligible. If, however, a move to the regions enhances partnership prospects, then this could be a price well worth paying as the difference in partner profitability between regional firms and all but the top City practices has narrowed fast.
Meanwhile, as in the other major regional centres, the success of the leading firms on the national and international stage has encouraged other firms to try and exploit the ‘gap’ that the bigger boys and girls leave behind as the deals and clients get bigger.
Established local middle tier firms such as Gateley Wareing are targeting the work, and the clients, which were once the preserve of the city’s ‘big four.’ Middle-tier stalwart Lee Crowder has been revitalised by its merger with Manchester’s Cobbetts, moving into the city’s premier thoroughfare, Colmore Row, in the process.
In the case of Birmingham, this has led to an influx of firms from outside the city – for example Browne Jacobson, Harvey Ingram Owston and Shoosmiths – and the development of more substantial commercial offerings by firms already in the city for other reasons, such as Mills and Reeve, Bevan Brittan and Beachcroft Wansbroughs.
This creates a demand for top quality commercial lawyers from the middle-tier and the range of disciplines offered by these firms is expanding rapidly. Local recruiters say that good quality candidates are much more willing to consider firms below the top five and, in turn, the standards demanded by these firms has increased and they are more frequently demanding candidates from the national firms.
They do, however, tend to have a preference for local lawyers and relocaters will need to do some convincing of their commitment to the region at interview. Local knowledge and contacts are vital assets as they try to expand the quality and quantity of their business by winning new clients and, for the same reasons, marketing skills are even more in demand by middle-tier firms than by those at the top of the tree.
The prospects for those looking to move in-house are a little more mixed. One feature of the West Midlands market has been the gradual erosion of the plc base as its major corporates have merged or been swallowed up by foreign companies. Large in-house teams are fairly uncommon compared with the south-east or the north-west. The region does, however, retain a vibrant tranche of growing mid-sized companies, many of which are recruiting in-house lawyers for the first time, leaving a buoyant, but diffuse market for corporate counsel and a slight lack of employers able to offer a structured career path.
The decline of the local plc, combined with the departure of some private equity houses to London and the closure of Ernst & Young’s West Midlands corporate finance department, also raises some questions about the viability of the middle-tier firms’ efforts to move into the market space apparently being vacated by the “big five”. Birmingham has always been a very competitive legal market and it may be about to become a bit more cut-throat once again.
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