In the latest of our regional profiles, Jonathan Rayner looks at the booming hi-tech economy of the Thames Valley and the vibrant legal markets in the Northern Home Counties

Business is booming in the Home Counties. In the Thames Valley in particular, it is booming for software developers, hi-tech innovators, pharmaceutical giants, electronics multinationals, automotive manufacturers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and firms of solicitors.


It is small wonder that Thames Valley lawyers are prospering. According to the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), the region contributes more than one-third to the overall economy of the south-east of England, which along with London and the east of England is the richest area of the UK. Indeed, GVA (gross value added – which measures an area’s net output) for the Thames Valley was £45.2 billion in 2002 and has been growing by 4.5% every year since.



And SEEDA predicts that over the next decade, the Thames Valley will out-perform all the other 300 regional economic units making up the EU.



The list of corporations operating out of the Thames Valley reads like a roll call of commercial achievement and innovation. The communications cluster includes Vodafone, British Telecom, Ericsson, Nortel and MCI WorldCom. On the computer and electronics front, there are Dell, Siemens, Panasonic, Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, Fujitsu and many other big names.



Oxford boasts a world-leading science park, and has become a hub for research into bio-chemicals, bio-fuels and pharmaceuticals. The automotive industry can offer up BMW and Honda, while the utilities sector includes Thames Water. And on top of this, there are SMEs and owner-managed businesses in every conceivable field.



The Thames Valley is a veritable cornucopia of opportunity – an assessment with which Jane Masih, a company and commercial partner at Slough-based law firm Owen White, concurs. She is also president of the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group, an umbrella organisation for nine local chambers – which allows her to take an overview across the entire business spectrum.



Ms Masih observes that the commercial environment offers rich pickings from one-man bands through to Microsoft. ‘And the same is true of law firms, which range from big players like Howes Percival, Pitmans, Shoosmith and Manches through to sole practitioners.’



Ms Masih says the prevailing climate of commercial optimism and growth in the Thames Valley has given her firm, which deals with niche areas such as franchising and social housing, the ideal environment in which to flourish.



But she is careful not to see the region through rose-tinted spectacles. There are downsides to practising in the Thames Valley, too, she says, which mostly involve staffing issues. London, with its higher salaries and bright lights, is a temptingly short commute away. The proximity of London is also responsible for high house prices – another good reason to work in the big city. And locally, unemployment is statistically nil, which means support staff, in particular, can afford to be choosy.



But these factors do not appear to have had a detrimental effect on the development of legal practice in the region. Morgan Cole straddles the M4, with a head office in Oxford and two branches in Reading, as well as others further afield. Commercial director Tim Pashley remarks that Oxford and Reading are two very different markets.



The Oxford head office has a vibrant intellectual property (IP) practice centred on the biotechnology research hub at the Oxford Science Park. Reading’s focus, on the other hand, is towards the various IT and other hi-tech companies that line the M3 and M4 motorways.



Mr Pashley says: ‘But whereas both Oxford and Reading are keen to serve local clients, the bulk of our business is national, even international. We’re close to Heathrow and to London, which overseas clients like. And work migrates out of London, because clients prefer to pay Thames Valley hourly rates.’



Both Oxford and Reading have many well-respected indigenous practices (including Pitmans, Field Seymour Parkes and Boyes Turner in Reading; Darbys and Henmans in Oxford), as well as the local offices of large regional firms – such as Osborne Clarke and Shoosmiths (in Reading) and Blake Lapthorn Linnell (in Oxford, formed through a merger with a local firm).



Reading firm Clarkslegal, like many in the region, also claims an international dimension to much of its client base. Managing partner Michael Sippitt says: ‘The Thames Valley is almost an extension of the US. Many of the multinationals are US-owned. This is particularly so in the IT sector, where a hub has grown up and attracted smaller companies, some of which are also American.’



He goes on to explain that fast access to both London and Heathrow is ‘very, very important’ when talking to potential overseas clients. Ease of access was also behind the decision, three years ago, to open a London office. Mr Sippitt adds: ‘We’re in Covent Garden, which is centrally located and is a buzzy, attractive part of the world. Clients enjoy going to see us there.’



Covent Garden is the easternmost limit of what Mr Sippitt calls ‘Clarkslegal’s deliberate strategy to be an M4 practice’. It is a practice which now stretches as far west along the M4 as Cardiff and Swansea. But Reading remains at the epicentre, from where the firm is set to benefit from the resurgent technology sector as it recovers from the dot-com crisis. He says: ‘There’s a positive business mind-set in Reading that’s intangible, but real. It’s an open business community, receptive to new arrivals and where it’s easy to integrate.’



Pitmans is another firm that rates Reading highly as a business centre. It already has eight offices in the town, all on Castle Street, and is soon to open a ninth around the corner. Managing partner Christopher Avery says: ‘We’re in expansive mode. We’ve already got 220 people in Reading, of whom 24 are partners and 100 are fee-earners. We expect to expand to 300 – and that’s not counting the dozen or so people we’ve got in our City office.’



Mr Avery says some of the firm’s work comes from the local version of Silicon Valley. ‘The Americans are coming back after the dot-com slump. We’ve seen Siemens and Fujitsu taking on new leases, and there are more to come.’



Pitmans mainly practises corporate and commercial work, with its banking, commercial property and litigation departments all ‘very busy’. Its City office is ‘going great guns’ both in the City itself and in Docklands. Plus it has recently recruited big-hitters from Olswang, Eversheds and elsewhere.



Much has been made of the contribution of the multinational corporations that have based themselves along the M4 to the local Thames Valley economy. These corporations interact with law firms through their in-house lawyers.



One such practitioner is Bruce Macmillan, senior counsel of home and small business software and peripherals at computer manufacturer Dell. He works from offices in Bracknell, where Dell, along with the likes of Oracle, Sun, Vodafone and MCI WorldCom, make up the UK equivalent of Silicon Valley.



Mr Macmillan says: ‘In common with my in-house colleagues elsewhere, Dell uses a mix and match of local and other solicitors.’ He adds that the region is a stimulating environment in which to practise, with many colleagues working for high-profile clients in an industry noted for its innovations.



Reflecting his commitment to the region, he and two lawyers from Vodafone were instrumental in founding the Thames Valley Commerce & Industry Group in June this year. The group organises events for in-house lawyers and makes representations to the Law Society, government departments and other organisations on issues that affect members.



Shoosmiths has been established in the region for more than 150 years, with a head office in Northampton, and links with the Thames Valley through its Reading and Milton Keynes branches.



John Peet is a commercial property partner, and also the operational head of the Northampton office. He says that business across the region is good thanks to the increased willingness of large commercial clients to instruct national, non-London firms with more and more work.



Northampton boasts some major financial clients, and both Barclaycard and the Nationwide Building Society have large offices there. Northampton’s proximity to the motorway has also led to a proliferation of warehousing and distribution centres. Mr Peet adds: ‘And then there’s the traditional shoe-making industry. Church’s and Crockett & Jones are both still in the town.’



He says: ‘Cost is a factor, of course, because we’re less expensive than a firm with London overheads. But quality is not a casualty of our relative inexpensiveness. Our financial litigation and recovery team, for example, has a level of expertise that you won’t find even in central London. We’ve acted in several high-profile and complex multi-party disputes.’



Mr Peet also points to Shoosmiths’ commercial, direct conveyancing – 25,000 mortgages and re-mortgages over the last year alone – and private client operations as major contributors to the firm’s success.



Milton Keynes has been a hive of activity of late, with EMW Law – which also has a base in Northampton – hiring five partners (including the senior partner) and four other fee-earners from fellow Milton Keynes firm Fennemores. Then in May it formed eda law, a partnership between EMW and Charlotte Dunn (former head of private client department at the local office of Stockport firm Gorvins), to provide trust, tax and probate services. The firm said it had acted because of ‘a perceived lack of quality private client offerings in the area’.



Milton Keynes is also home to a number of small but increasingly well-known commercial firms, such as Kimbells and Geoffrey Leaver, while City firm Denton Wilde Sapte has an office in the city, as does Watford’s Matthew Arnold & Baldwin (MAB), a recent addition to the scene.



Brandon Ransley is the managing partner of Howes Percival in Milton Keynes. This is the highest billing of the firm’s four offices, none of which is in London because, as Mr Ransley says, ‘London is a congested market’. The firm is also a major player in Northampton.



Howes Percival is determined to remain provincial, and Mr Ransley claims its automotive work, which spans the entire country from Southampton to Carlisle and from Wales to King’s Lynn, is one factor that enables it to prosper on a national scale. There is international work, too, and work ‘dragged out of London’, such as National Geographic and Amalgamated Metal Corporation.



He adds: ‘We may not be in London, but we’ve recruited lots of people out of London because we can offer them the same high quality of work. They then go back to their old clients and tell them they can do the job for two-thirds or three-quarters of the price.’



MAB, a 28-partner practice which also opened in London last year, is proof that heavyweight commercial firms can exist outside of the Thames Valley corridor, and the area further north to Milton Keynes and Northampton. Collins Solicitors, also in Watford, has made waves through its transport litigation, acting on several major rail crashes.



MAB, which was a Watford firm for 100 years, now has offices in Milton Keynes and London as well. It saw a 29% increase in turnover last year and is predicting a turnover this year of £16 million, putting it just 20 or so places beneath the top 100. Steven Mills, head of banking and finance, said: ‘We’re recognised as a progressive firm, which is making it easier to recruit big hitters to our Watford and Milton Keynes offices.’



Many of the best-known firms in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire try to span the area, such as Taylor Walton, based in St Albans, Luton and Harpenden, and Pictons, with offices in Hemel Hempstead, Luton and Milton Keynes. Pictons underwent a major restructuring last year, with its St Albans office breaking off to form a standalone practice – SA Law – and its Bedford and Luton crime practices also spinning off to become new firms run by former Pictons partners.



Moving west, Uxbridge is home to the likes of fast-expanding IBB and Turbervilles, while BP Collins in Gerrards Cross and Moorcrofts in Marlow have made their mark too. The region is home to the successful outposts of well-known London firms, such as Manches, Charles Russell and US firm WilmerHale in Oxford, Olswang in Reading and Penningtons in Newbury.



As Shoosmiths’ Mr Peet says, the booming economy in the Thames Valley and northern Home Counties ‘is the ideal environment for an enterprising law firm’.



That is the word which encapsulates this part of the country. Enterprise is patently the overriding theme, for clients and solicitors alike.



Jonathan Rayner