Pinsent Masons
No of UK Partners: 247
No of UK Assistant Solicitors: 485
www.pinsents.com
Pinsents, the result of the 1995 merger between Leeds’ Simpson Curtis and Birmingham’s Pinsent & Co has long been considered the most ‘blue chip’ adviser of the national firms. It’s had to work hard in recent years to protect this reputation as its most obvious rivals have made significant progress in developing their FTSE client-bases.
It has supplemented this strategy more recently through its ‘chosen markets’ approach, identifying areas of the economy within which it sets itself the target of becoming a leading firm. Initially 9 in number, these were refined down to 6 in 2003 as part of the strategic review which led the firm to drop the ‘Curtis’ and ‘Biddle’ parts of its name to become simply ‘Pinsents’. The chosen markets the firm focuses on are financial services and insurance, government, manufacturing, real estate, services and technology.
It was this apparent synergy with another exponent of the sector-focused approach, construction, IT and energy specialists Masons, which led to their merger in 2004. This created a 900-lawyer firm with UK offices in London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh and an international presence in Brussels, Hong Kong and Shanghai, as well as a series of strategic alliances in Denmark, Dubai, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Poland, Sweden, Spain and the USA. The lure for Pinsents has been to increase its critical mass in London and gain access to Masons’ high quality client base. While, for Masons, the attraction is being able to sell that Pinsents’ corporate capability to its clients in addition to the project advice it already provides.
Birmingham is arguably the least affected of the Pinsent Masons’ offices, as Masons did not have a presence in the city prior to the merger and the list of its core strengths in the city – banking and finance, competition, corporate, dispute resolution and litigation, employment, major projects, planning, property, public sector, tax (inc. employee share schemes), technology and media – remain unchanged.
Likewise, the clientele are likely to remain much the same, in the short-term at least, consisting primarily of Midlands plcs and major private Midlands companies, City and Metropolitan Borough Councils and NHS Trusts, in addition to a national plc client base which includes Barclays, BOC Group, CGNU, HBOS, Argos, Tesco, British Telecom and NM Rothschild.
The result of both firms’ sector focus is the emphasis they also place on getting close to their clients. This is also reflected in the profile of the lawyers they look to recruit.
“We look for commercial awareness, good communication skills, technical excellence and a sense of fun,” says Birmingham joint managing partner, Paul Finlan.
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