Hill Dickinson
No of Partners: 130
No of Assistant Solicitors: 163
www.hilldickinson.com
Of all the Liverpool-headquartered firms attempting to crack the Manchester corporate and commercial market, Hill Dickinson is the one competitors say has had the most success to date.
Hill Dickinson’s roots are in insurance litigation, where it retains an excellent reputation. The decision to diversify into commercial areas was taken as long ago as 1996 – at a time when the major insurance companies began to turn the screw on their legal suppliers and the firm looked to other areas for its future growth.
This process has accelerated since the turn of the century. In 2002, the firm merged with Manchester’s Gorna & Co and, in 2004, with niche Merseyside property practice Bullivant Jones as it targets both commercial and property clients across the north-west. In 2001, the firm’s turnover was £22m; by 2004 this figure had reached £40m, which Hill Dickinson hopes to grow by another £5m in the next 12 months. It now numbers 130 partners and 163 other solicitors.
“Only 40% of our turnover comes from litigation and the remainder comes from our corporate and commercial activities,” says senior partner Tony Wilson. “We no longer describe ourselves as an insurance practice.”
Given the differing profiles of Hill Dickinson’s 2 main markets (it also has an office in Chester serving private clients and a London office servicing the insurance market), it might be tempting to think that the insurance work would be left to Liverpool, while the corporate lawyers are located in Manchester, with property split between the two. Not so, says Wilson, who points out that the firm has more corporate lawyers in Liverpool than in Manchester and that the firm’s head of corporate is based on Merseyside. “There is enough work in this area to justify it,” Wilson says.
Wilson adds that the forthcoming reign of Liverpool as the European Capital of Culture in 2008 can only increase the flow of corporate work on Merseyside. In order to benefit from this influx of inward investment, the firm has also become the first official sponsor of the Liverpool Capital of Culture celebrations, which will see the firm provide some legal services to the event. It will also allow the firm to work with some of the other corporate sponsors of the events and, it hopes, put it at the front of the queue to work with companies looking to invest in the region.
In the meantime, the firm will continue to expand as it seeks to become one of the country’s top 30 law firms, and is improving the breadth of its offering by recruiting banking and corporate finance specialists. Other immediate plans are to strengthen commercial litigation and to continue to recruit property lawyers as the redevelopment boom in both Liverpool and Manchester carries on apace. The firm also has considerable strengths in shipping, clinical negligence and private client work and a sports practice that has a number of Premiership football clubs in its books.
So what does Hill Dickinson look for in potential recruits? Technical capability, commercial awareness and lawyers who put client service as their top priority. People capable of providing the personal service that the firm hopes will give it an edge as it seeks to win work from some of the more established players in Manchester.
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