Charles Russell (London)

Our view...
    
With more than 100 partners Charles Russell is a larger firm than one might think. The firm has been a smart, family run private client practice for generations. It used to be the firm to which wealthy Catholic families turned - the irony being that it’s a great divorce outfit. Although the family link has now weakened, offices in Cheltenham and Guildford help maintain ties with wealthier landed clients.
 
CR now has international reach, and whilst it retains its reputation for high quality private client advice it also has commercial clout and decent media and technology capabilities. Some insiders says that the firm suffers from a bit of an identity crisis and is unsure whether it should be leaning towards the corporate or private client side. But Withers managed to square that circle so there’s no reason why CR shouldn’t.
 
Inevitably, many of the people who use expensive private client lawyers hold senior positions at large corporations, and CR has been able to capitalise on this. The firm was instructed by Ericsson as a result of a personal contact of one its partners. And it’s been building its client list. CR has established a strong reputation for advising smaller companies on the Alternative Investment Market, and in early 2008 it was one of eleven firms to be invited by Sainsburys to join the supermarket’s first formal legal panel.
 
The firm has rushed to expand overseas - it recently opened offices in Geneva and Bahrain. Back in the UK it has invested in larger premises in central Cambridge, opened in Oxford and moved to new London headquarters in February 2009, bringing an end to the endless complaints about the slow lifts and grotty loos.
 
Of course all this will have to be paid for in a depressed market, and the widely held fear that “redundancies may be on the way” was confirmed at the beginning of 2009 and associates were split on how the firm handled them. Some praised it for being "open and honest" with staff but there was a strong feeling that the firm hadn't realised how much "morale had been battered" and had been slow to deal with it. This was summed up by one associate's view that "the majority of people in charge think the rest of us are very, very stupid indeed". Oooh...  
 
And whilst the firm wins praise for its collegiality and reasonable working hours, one associate complains that its partners are “great lawyers but rubbish managers”. Another says that they are also “far too willing to write off time, which can be disheartening”. On the upside, the firm does now offer a subsidised staff canteen but the free donuts on a Friday have gone.