|
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.
Email
your comments
For
more information on Wragge & Co click
here |
