Gordons
No of Partners: 33
No of Assistant Solicitors: 41
www.gordonscranswick.co.uk
2003 will certainly go down in Gordons’ history as the year the firm hit the big time, debuting at number 17 in the M&A charts ahead of established City of London heavyweights such as Travers Smith Braithwaite and Macfarlanes.
The source of the firm’s good fortune was its long-standing relationship with Bradford-based supermarket chain, William Morrison. William Morrison hit the national stage itself in 2003 with its £3bn takeover of rival retailer, Safeway, the first major merger in its history.
Morrisons has been a client of the firm for longer than anyone currently at Gordons can remember and has traditionally used it for the bulk of its work. Although the Safeway acquisition was led by Ashursts, Gordons effectively took on the role of Morrisons’ in-house legal team, acting as conduit between its management and external lawyers.
The challenge for the firm now is to exploit its new-found profile and experience to achieve its ambition to be a “viable alternative to the big six in Leeds”.
The firm merged in May 2004 with Leeds’ Nelson & Co. Prior to this, the firm had already doubled in size over the previous 5 years owing to a merger in 2000 with Leeds firm Cranswick Watson and another merger 2 years later with Sugden Spencer in Bradford. It currently has 115 lawyers across its Bradford and Leeds offices. The most recent merger with Nelson & Co. has boosted its turnover from £10m to £15m at a stroke.
Morrisons is not the firm’s only major client – it also acts for household names such as national car dealer JCT600 and brewers Coors. The challenge for the firm now is to rise above the perception that it is simply the supermarket’s de facto in-house legal team. The Nelsons merger will certainly assist in this regard as the firm adds the likes of Next and the Allied Irish Bank to its client list.
The Morrisons link means that some of the firm’s departments have experience of a much higher calibre of work than might be expected from a firm of Gordon’s size and profile. The corporate and employment practices have been exposed to a level of work that most mid-sized firms could only dream of and the firm claims its commercial property practice to be on a par with the Leeds big six.
The firm has also enjoyed some success in attracting partners from the national practices in Leeds, as had Nelson & Co. The link-up with Nelson & Co also adds a place on the Law Society’s Intervention Panel and a sports practice which acts for professional football and rugby players as well as sports clubs, associations and manufacturers.
“We want to improve the quality of work that we do” says head of corporate, John Holden. “Our relationship with Morrisons has given us access to top quality work and drawn good people into the firm. You need people with experience and confidence.”
Despite its recent success, and increase in size, the firm is keen to retain its ‘down to earth’ culture. In addition to the usual qualities, potential recruits need to be bright and practical people who can develop relationships of trust with key decision-makers. They also need to be ambitious.
“We want to produce a value that clients will pay for” Holden says. “That doesn’t mean offering hundreds of different disciplines, it comes from providing intelligent, considered and practical advice.”
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