Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) secured a 50 per cent interest in Australian legal resourcing business Advent Balance for £6.25m, its LLPs have revealed.
The business will be combined with the group’s existing legal resourcing services Lawyers on Demand (LOD), which will be combined with Advent under a new holding company LOD Global. BLP will continue to hold a 64 per cent equity interest in the company.
The LLPs also revealed that BLP recorded a 2 per cent decrease in turnover to the end of April 2016 from £259.2m to 253.9m.
Despite the fall, the firm posted its second highest average profit per equity partner ever last summer, growing from £659,000 to £683,000. At the same time it emerged the firm was freezing all lawyer and staff salaries amid the fallout from the Brexit vote in June. The firm finally reinstated its annual pay review last November.
BLP staff costs fell from £108.2m in 2015 to £107.8m this year. The number of legal staff remained the same while support staff numbers were reduced from 606 in 2015 to 598 in 2016.
Meanwhile, the firm’s highest paid partner earned £1.51m in 2016, down 0.02 per cent from the previous year.
BLP attempted to pull off a US merger last year with Greenberg Traurig. A merger would have created a transatlantic powerhouse with over 2,500 lawyers and more than £1bn in revenue, but talks were called off in March due to a lack of ‘commonalities’.
The post BLP reveals £6m investment in Australian legal resourcing business appeared first on The Lawyer | Legal News and Jobs | Advancing the business of law.