on a par with City firms both in terms of quality and breadth
Legal 500
Over 38 lawyers including 11 partners specialise in meeting our clients' non-contentious commercial contract needs (excluding those corporate and finance requirements). The team has an outstanding reputation and is consistently ranked in the 'top tier' category by the legal directories.
Our hallmark is a practical approach, working with our clients in partnership and strong continuity of contacts over the long-term relationships which we like to build. This ethos has resulted in a practice that is not only able to attract high quality clients on both a regional, national and international basis, but is able to retain good, close relationships with those clients.
Work
The general commercial work of the Unit includes the full range of major commercial contract and transactional work, including agency and distribution, procurement (both public and private), strategic outsourcing arrangements, franchising, collaboration and joint venture projects, to name but a few.
Commercial clients include:
Orange Telecommunications
First Group plc
British Aerospace
Ministry of Defence
Reuters
United Biscuits
Matthew Clark
National Trust
Foster Yeoman
Recent significant work includes:
Advising The Wright Group (The UKs leading supplier of buses for public transportation systems) on winning a major export order to supply up to one hundred and fifty of their StreetCar Rapid Transit Vehicles (RTVs) to the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, which includes the city of Las Vegas. The order is worth approximately $155 million and could be the first of many orders from cities around the USA.
Advising FirstGroup on its 2007 bids for the InterCity East Coast, East Midlands and Cross Country franchises.
Advising SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems Limited, one of Europe's leading sensors solutions companies and the UK's foremost supplier of electronic systems for military platforms in the air, at sea and on land, on its outsourced contractual arrangements for the provision of core business services.
Advising Berry Gardens BV, which is now one of the largest international sales and marketing groups of soft food growers in the UK, Spain and the USA, on the exploitation of plant variety rights, growing and marketing agreements.
Advising the Avon & Somerset Police Authority on a major outsourcing of its back office arrangements through its potential participation in the ambitious shared services project ISiS.
Panel appointments:
We were appointed by OGCbuying.solutions to its Catalist legal panel across all categories including full commercial and major projects. This panel is likely to be the source for legal services appointments to the majority of significant commercial and major projects in the public sector for the next 4 years. We have had a number of significant wins from the Catalist panel already including appointments from Firebuy, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Transport.
We were appointed by Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems Ltd to advise on Commercial and IP work.
We were successful in a tender to advise Corus plc on a review of its commercial contracts and have subsequently advised the company on other areas of work including construction and corporate.
We were successful in a tender to advise Glatfelter (UK) which is part of the Glatfelter Inc Group of specialist paper manufacturers.
Appointed by the Department for Transport for two years as their 'principle firm' for general rolling stock advice.
