Weightmans
No of Partners: 83
No of Assistant Solicitors: 98
www.weightmans.com
Weightmans has been around since 1827, but the past decade has been by far the most active period the firm has enjoyed in its long history.
The firm’s roots are as a Liverpool insurance practice and this remains the firm’s major practice area. More recent times have seen the firm diversify into commercial work and away from its hometown into Birmingham and Manchester (1996) and Leicester (1999) and, since merging with insurance firm Vizard Oldham in 2002, into London.
The insurance practice is primarily defendant litigation on behalf of some major insurance companies such as Zurich and AXA, as well as some more specialist practices in healthcare (the firm is on the NHSLA panel) and professional negligence. The firm claims to be the national market leader in police claims, representing many police forces up and down the country. It also has a practice giving litigation and regulatory advice to the public sector – to local, fire, health and education authorities and advises construction and manufacturing companies on health & safety issues.
The insurance practice is spread across all of the firm’s offices, while the commercial department is based in Liverpool. In Liverpool, the main practice areas are corporate, employment, IT/IP, commercial litigation and property. The Manchester office offers all of these services plus planning, corporate recovery and tax disciplines. The commercial practice is focused primarily on the SME sector, although the firm hopes to benefit from cross-selling opportunities which arise from the bigger clients of the insurance practice.
The Liverpool corporate team hopes to benefit from the influx of inward investment ahead of the city’s year as Capital of Culture in 2008. However, the bulk of the growth is likely to be in Manchester where the firm made a string of high-profile hires in an attempt to boost the proportion of fee income the firm makes from its corporate and commercial departments to 30%.
So, what is the firm looking for from candidates? The ability to fit in is paramount.
“Weightmans is a nice place to work with a social atmosphere,” says Liverpool-based head of insurance, David Lewis. “And we try to export that culture to all of our offices. We are regarded as having very high professional standards, without being stuffy – it’s an informal and sociable place to work. We have high expectations and we look for self-motivated people who have high standards for themselves, but I think we get the work/life balance right – we don’t ruin peoples’ lives.”
So, potential joiners will need to be able to thrive in this sociable environment if they are to succeed. “We look at the person before the qualifications,” Lewis says. “We want team players.”
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