In March pretty much the entire editorial team of The Lawyer spent a week in Manchester. We came away certain of several things. First things first: sorry Birmingham and sorry Leeds – Manchester is definitively UK Law’s second city.
It wasn’t always this way; the North West used to lag behind Yorkshire in terms of regional heft. It was known for a handful of corporate firms and a swathe of PI practices, but Manchester’s legal scene has regenerated as fast as its skyline. It has become the UK legal market in microcosm. Every trend, every aspect of the competitive dynamic is magnified there. London has US firms coming in to skew salaries; in Manchester the out-of towners are putting the establishment on alert. Nabarro and TLT are building strong practices, while DWF and Clyde & Co, both of which took on parts of collapsed firms Cobbetts and Halliwells, are still aggressively building market share. The accountancy-tied practices are scaring the bejesus out of the mid-market, there are thriving SME-focused firms such as JMW and major New Law providers such as Gunnercooke. The champagne supernova set, derivatively dubbed the Manchester magic circle, are still dominant in the business community, but the old order is being unsettled by lateral hiring. The speed of the partner merry-go-round is dizzying. DLA Piper has seen exits to Irwin Mitchell, KPMG and TLT. Addleshaws has lost prominent partners to EY. Nabarro launched a corporate and finance practice by raiding Pinsents, Addleshaws and Eversheds.
But heritage matters, and it’s not going to be easy for the challengers. Eversheds has been in Manchester for aeons through legacy Alexander Tatham, while Addleshaw Goddard has retained its Manchester roots by keeping traces of Addleshaw Sons & Latham in its moniker. By contrast, Squire Patton Boggs’ (SPB) decision to do away with the Hammonds brand in the UK is seen as genuinely bonkers. There are perennial rumours that SPB wants to downgrade its North West presence, though these seem daft given its imminent investment in a trophy building.
All this is putting huge demands on recruitment, from partner to paralegal. This week deputy news editor Tabby Kinder looks at how Freshfields (cover story, page 22) has shaken up the transaction services market – already a mature one thanks to Addleshaws and BLP.
If you believe the Manchester rumour mill, Freshfields is also poised to station a partner in Salford to court North West plc work. It’s unlikely; the firm has its hands full selling new processes back into London, for a start. But in Manchester, anything could happen. Sometimes the sun even shines.