Withers (London)
Our view... it's private client wellies, but those Jimmy Choo Hunter ones.
One of the City's oldest blue blood private client practices, the past decade has seen Withers take everyone by surprise with a US merger and an international roll-out to some pretty flashy locations. The merger was intended to create the "
world's first international law firm dedicated to the globally wealthy". The firm now chases these wealthy families to wherever they lay their hats, and now has offices in - amongst other places - Milan, Geneva, Hong Kong, New
York and the BVI.
Withers has the largest private client practice in the world. The workforce across the board has expanded, and revenues for 2010-11 hit £100 million, up 9% the previous year. The firm represents a significant number of the wealthiest individuals and families in Asia, Europe and the US. In the UK alone it acts for nearly a quarter of the Sunday Times Rich List. I say.
And there are some terribly trendy clients, too, including Matthew Williamson, Lulu Guinness and MaxMara. Elsewhere, they service several charities of note, plus plenty of nameless Russian oligarchs and assorted very high net worth individuals, dealing with estate planning, marriages, divorces, and deaths and all the gubbins that goes with it.
Of course, Withers does other stuff too - corporate, litigation,
property - but given the huge focus
on private client work (which feeds plenty of work to the other departments), it's unsurprising that assistants report an "
excellent" work-life balance. As a result, pay is not at Magic Circle
levels - however rich an individual might be there is only so much you
can charge for a will. With all the new offices opening up, partnership profits have naturally taken a bit of a dive, and have dropped a bit from 2009's £357,000 to a still-solid £314k. Whether the money filters down the ranks is a bone of contention too, with one lawyer noting "
pay is pretty abysmal. Bonuses are ok if you hit target but could be more generous given pay is crap". The downturn hit the firm, too, with redundancies and four-day weeks the order of the day. Things are rumoured to have improved though, especially communication from on-high. And the "cameraderie" amongst lawyers is good. We're told the firm made a big effort to find/create openings for those trainees it was unable to place in last year's qualification round, which is dashed generous.
Appropriately for such a thrusting outfit, it's not as fossilized as many
private client firms
(mentioning no names) although there's a suspicion that lawyer/back-office relations aren't always great - "
admin staff generally treat the associates as a nuisance, and behave as though they're doing associates a favour". Well, you can't have it all. Its offices (which we're told do not smell of wet labrador) are a swanky glass structure in Old
Bailey and it appointed the first female senior partner in the City back in 1999 when such things were largely unheard of. So that's something.
If it's trying to be a forward-looking version of the usually staid private client
world, Withers certainly seems to be doing a good job of it.
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