Wragge & Co (Birmingham)

Our view....

Wragges is the biggest and arguably the best-established law firm in Birmingham, and has long insisted on a policy of expansion within the area rather than looking towards other regions and London. In 1992 it had 374 lawyers in the city, now it runs to more than 1,000.

Wragges weathered the last economic downturn better than some and, as befits a firm which makes a big play of how well it looks after its staff (it is the only law firm to make the Financial Times 50 best workplaces in the UK, ranking 13th), managed to avoid redundancies. The firm did well in the boom, regularly posting double digit rises in turnover which stood at £125million for 2007/2008. Partners make an average of around £470,000, and as one of the few proper partnerships left in the regions (every partner has a stake in the equity), this is good news for aspiring assistants. It's also good news for trainees - the firm's trainee retention rate since 1993 has averaged 92.25%.

Despite its PR office's denials, we still reckon that Wragges seems to be drifting towards focussing its resources more on its London office. By adding more and more niche teams to the original property and private equity departments down south it looks like it's tacitly admitting to the need to provide a full-service presence in the capital. One only has to look at DLA to see the sort of margins that Birmingham offices can get from City referrals... The fact that some 80% of the firm's total workflow comes out of London reinforces this.

The test is now ensuring that the firm increases the quality as well as quantity of its work, and the signs are promising. The firm's client base includes more than 30 FTSE 100 companies including the likes of GlaxoSmithKline, BP, BT, HSBC and 3i. The firm's work areas are corporate, human resources, dispute resolution, finance projects, technology and real estate. It has been making particular strides in the last of these, although not enough to achieve its stated ambition of becoming the number one full-service firm to the UK real estate industry by 2006. And how this focus - more than 30% of the firm's work is based on real estate - will hit the firm in the current downturn remains to be seen. However, the partners are clearly sufficiently confident to expand into Germany with a new IP litigation office in Munich.

Whatever its plans for the future, Wragges remains a solid firm with an excellent reputation. Recent deals included securitisations for Derbyshire and Chelsea Building Societies and £3bn-worth of Inland Revenue outsourcing work for Cap Gemini.

Bear in mind that this sort of work necessitates long hours, and insiders grumble that the firm "expects London hours and benchmarks itself against London firms but pays Birmingham salaries". But that must be a concern of any regional firm doing first rate work, and at least - according to our readers, it has the best biscuits and cakes of any firm in the country. In our view, the pick of Birmingham.