HBJ Gateley Wareing
No of Partners: 70
No of Assistant Solicitors: 115
www.gateleywareing.com
HBJ Gateley Wareing has long been at the vanguard of the Midlands middle tier serving the region’s owner-managed businesses. Recent years, however, have seen the firm begin an earnest attack on the plc sector.
It has done this through a series of partner hires from the national firms in Birmingham, taking advantage of their temporary weakness. In the past 2 years, HBJ Gateley Wareing has taken a succession of partners and other staff from the big five in Birmingham, including corporate partners Paul Cliff and Katie Sylvester from Hammonds, Eversheds’ property partner Callum Nuttall, Hammonds’ Birmingham head of construction, David Lloyd Jones and property partner Richard Pettifer from Wragge & Co.
With a substantial commercial practice, the firm is arranged into 9 practice groups – corporate, commercial and technology, employment, dispute resolution, finance, property, construction, tax and a three-lawyer private client team.
Turnover growth has been running at 20% per annum and the firm has now grown to 170 staff but has already publicly stated that it does not want to continue to grow exponentially. It seems unlikely that the firm will abandon the mid-market where it enjoys a stellar reputation. The firm’s finance practice, particularly its private equity team, is also very well regarded, boasting a client list which includes Lloyds Development Capital, HSBC and the Bank of Scotland amongst others.
In the East Midlands, where HBJ Gateley Wareing has offices in Nottingham and Leicester, the focus has remained on the owner-managed sector. The firm sensed an opportunity here as some of the larger firms in the East Midlands turned their attentions toward Birmingham and further afield. “Our recent expansion enables us to fill the vacuum left by the national firms which increasingly seem to concentrate on national clients rather than the needs of local businesses,” says corporate partner, Austin Moore.
Gateley’s improving market profile means that it is raising its sights in the recruitment market too, but personal characteristics remain paramount.
The firm says that it prides itself on its innovative and progressive atmosphere and its lawyers, therefore, need to be ambitious, motivated and creative individuals.
“We recruit lawyers who are practical, good listeners and questioners and who are commercially-minded,” adds HR director, Graham Smith.
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