Our view...

Ince & Co, Holman Fenwick and Willan and Clyde & Co together form the triumverate of top City shipping firms. Ince makes the least money, but it’s still perfectly profitable - its most senior partners take home a respectable £311,000, and assistants’ salaries compare favourably with all but the largest corporate practices.

Shipping firms tend to have a slightly more relaxed attitude to hours than more corporate finance driven practices, and this seems to be the case here. Assistants say that hours are generally civilised in all areas. On the downside, shipping law isn't everyone’s cup of tea, especially it would seem to the lady lawyers out there. When last we heard, of a total of 99 partners (many of whom started their careers with the firm), only 14 are female. Almost as poor a proportion as the woeful 12 out of 106 at Holman Fenwick. What is it with shipping firms?

Ince has a curious system where there are no departments, everyone just sits together. You can work for anyone, but generally have 10-15 partners who give you work as and when you have capacity. So as a trainee, you can carry matters through the two years of your training.

The training seems to please. As one associate explains, “from a professional development perspective, there is a very clear career path guidance document detailing what responsibilities you can expect at each stage in your career, the milestones in professional development, how those milestones are measured and the benefits of achieving them”.

The opportunity to work abroad is another plus, and on the international front it’s been a busy few years. The firm has European offices Le Havre, Piraeus, Paris. Monaco and Hamburg to its letterhead, plus the only slightly more exotic Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. So there are plenty of interesting places to work when the fleet's in port. Most of all London – the offices overlooking Tower Bridge are beautiful, and are blessed with a chef apparently poached from Claridges which means the food's great. It's a real laugh, too, with one Incer commenting that the firm "almost encourages binge drinking".

All of this expansion costs money, of course, and it will be interesting to see if the firm maintains its profitability over the next couple of years. For a while it seemed to have a bearing on NQ retention - this fell to a miserly 58% a few years back and only nine new trainees were taken on. But all of those nine were kept on when they qualified, and the firm now says that it's back to recruiting a dozen trainees a year - and almost all will be kept on (11 from 12 in 2009, 10 from 12 in 2010 and 14 from 15 in 2011). And salaries continue to outpace the competition.

A very impressive second place in the 2011 Firm of the Year survey, was followed by victory in 2012's survey. Responses vindicated all the firm's hard work - with particular attention being drawn to the fantastic people and the untouchable social life (especially if you like sailing). Such a great place, in fact, that it's the only firm ever described as "like living in a land of unicorns and rainbows".

Overall a very decent firm with an interesting set up and what must be one of the best cash/ work ratios in the City ("we know that pound for hour, we work in the best firm in the City").
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