Cobbetts
No of Partners: 136
No of Assistant Solicitors: 180
www.cobbetts.co.uk
Cobbetts is at the vanguard of a nascent movement to create a new wave of national firms, hoping to fill the gap left in the regions by the first batch of national firms as they expand into London and overseas.
To this end, the past 2 years have seen the firm merge with Leeds’ Hind Read Stewart (2002) and Birmingham’s Lee Crowder (2003) before taking in planning law boutique Wilbraham & Co in Leeds, mining boutique Fox Brooks Marshall in Manchester and the Leeds office of Yorkshire firm Walker Charlesworth, which specialises in social housing.
Although Cobbetts claims that it now does not have an official headquarters, the firm originates in Manchester, which remains its largest office, housing 181 of the firm’s lawyers, compared with 107 in Leeds and 100 in Birmingham. Nevertheless, the aim is to create offices of equal strength in all 3 of its centres.
“We want to be the leading law firm outside London with real strength in the principle regional markets,” says managing partner, Michael Shaw.
The firm’s immediate plans are very much focussed on putting this vision into reality and integrating the 3 parts of the firm into national practice groups. So, in Manchester, there is an emphasis on expanding the corporate practice, while in Birmingham, the emphasis is on growing the property practice, (the legacy firm Lee Crowder was, in contrast, more corporate-based), as well as employment and IP. Cobbetts will also be rolling out its Manchester AIM practice (which has a niche in IPOs for overseas mining companies) to its other regional centres. And, as the Walker Charlesworth merger demonstrates, a major focus of the firm is the social housing practice, already 45 lawyers strong, which the firm hopes will become the leading social housing department in the country.
One thing that the firm will not be doing is following the top tier national firms into London. Although Cobbetts took on premises in the capital in 2003, it has no staff permanently based there and there are no plans to do so.
The firm’s corporate client base, it says, is the top end of the owner-managed business market and the UK subsidiaries of foreign companies. However, to achieve its ambitious aim, the firm will need to leverage off some of the plc clients who use its property, employment and banking practices. Another challenge facing the firm is managing this exponential growth while maintaining the team-orientated, homogeneous internal culture which saw the firm reach number 12 in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work survey in 2004, the second-placed law firm.
“We are extremely careful about recruitment,” says managing partner, Shaw.
“Most firms focus on how much money a prospective partner will bring into the firm, but we focus on individual characteristics and look at whether they share our values and operate in the same way that we do.”
Below partner level, a similar creed applies. According to Shaw, “We look for people who are prepared to work as part of a team”.
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