Lupton Fawcett
No of Partners: 23
No of Assistant Solicitors: 29
Other Fee-earners: 33
www.lupton-fawcett.co.uk
Once nicknamed Dibbs-by-the-Sea on account of the number of former DLA Piper partners that moved there, Lupton Fawcett is one of the premier challengers for the lucrative marketplace just beneath the big six.
It claims to occupy a position between the city’s middle tier and the big six, following a major re-branding and strategic rethink in 2001. Lupton Fawcett’s commercial property and employment departments act for plc clients. However, ‘Cluster analysis’ of its client base and the region’s strongest-growing industries led to a focus on owner-managed businesses, particularly in the advanced engineering and metals, chemicals, digital industries, food and drink and biosciences sectors.
It is far from the only firm targeting this market, but one of the other ways it hopes to stand out from the group of other firms jockeying for position is by offering what it describes as the ‘integrated’ approach to its clients. This means maintaining a strong private client department as well as the usual commercial disciplines – corporate, employment, commercial property, commercial dispute resolution, and the commercial law group, which covers areas such as IP, regulatory work, competition law and data protection.
The ‘personal legal services division’ as the firm prefers to call it, includes not only tax and estate planning, but also residential property, matrimonial and family law. It also boasts an award-winning independent financial advice department, one of the few solicitors firms to offer financial planning advice.
“We spotted a gap in the market left by the big six,” says partner Richard Marshall. “They weren’t serving the proprietors of businesses very well. You need to serve the whole of the client and it creates a virtuous circle.”
The firm also has niches in sports management, education and partnership law and defendant professional negligence. A further string to its bow is a significant claimant personal injury practice, which employs 22 legal executives.
Based solely in Leeds, Lupton Fawcett currently has 23 partners, 29 solicitors, four trainees and 29 other fee-earners. The firm describes its strength as coming from the people it recruits, and has achieved the ‘Investors in People’ standard. The qualities it looks for in potential recruits are ambition, self-motivation, enthusiasm, dynamism and the ability to be team players. It prefers applicants to apply directly via its website rather than through recruitment consultants.
“What we are most interested in is attitude,” Marshall adds. “The hardest thing to do is to get lawyers to really understand what the client wants to do. We recruit for attitude and train for skills.”
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