In our latest regional profile, Jon Robins explores the expanding legal markets of the South coast and focuses on the challenges facing the area’s barristers


Should any City lawyers harbour daydreams about retiring from the rat race and relocating to practise in the sleepier environs of the south coast, perhaps taking in some sailing on the Solent between client meetings, then they should think again. Life has been increasingly hectic for those firms based on the affluent commuter belt that takes in the commercial centres of Southampton and Portsmouth, as well as Bournemouth and Salisbury.



Gregory Townsend, senior clerk at leading Southampton set 17 Carlton Crescent, provides a potted history of the comings-and-goings over recent years in the area’s main legal centre. ‘Bond Pearce moved in from the south-west when it took over Hepherd Winstanley & Pugh in 1998,’ he recounts.



‘Since then a number of large firms have relocated to Southampton, such as Coffin Mew & Clover, which moved its commercial division into the city two and a half years ago. Then Lester Aldridge moved from Bournemouth here to set up its commercial department and, more recently, Blake Lapthorn Linnell moved into a very large office block.’



Mr Townsend reckons that a number of the larger players have been ‘swallowing up’ the smaller firms. Another commentator on the local legal scene uses the same analogy, but adds: ‘And spitting out the less-than-profitable bits that they don’t want.’



The largest player is Bond Pearce, which in under ten years has transformed itself from a small Plymouth-based outfit to a regional heavyweight with principal offices in Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, Southampton and London as well as offices in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Leeds.



What does the firm make of all the recent activity? ‘I think law firms are rather nervous about their position and, on a smaller scale, the pressures are similar to that in London,’ replies partner Nick Page. He reckons such insecurities are most keenly felt by the smaller regional players – but not his firm, with its national aspirations. Bond Pearce has 20 partners and about 70 fee-earners in Southampton, making it considerably larger than the likes of Blake Lapthorn Linnell or Paris Smith & Randall. ‘We don’t want to sound too pleased with ourselves, but I think that we’re different to most firms around here because our client base is different,’ Mr Page continues.



‘We are concentrating more on acting for corporates with higher profiles across the region. Most of the firms on the south coast tend to have a lot more local focus. We see ourselves as one of the largest, if not the largest, corporate/commercial firm in the south. Therefore, we are hoping to pick up a different brand of work.’ The firm ranks itself alongside the likes of other major regional big boys, such as Wragge & Co or Addleshaw Goddard.



Mr Page argues that the problem for many firms of a certain size in the region is that they become caught in no-man’s land between the regional practices and national players. Blake Lapthorn Linnell has been in expansionist mode of late. Earlier in the year, it merged with Winchester-based private practice firm White & Bowker. Not everyone was happy with the move – a number of lawyers jumped ship, including head of litigation Laurence Dunn who went to Warner Goodman & Streat. Blakes has been on the move for a while – in 2003 it took over Linnells in Oxford and 18 months prior to that it merged with 12-partner Portsmouth practice Sherwin Oliver. The firm is at it again, and from December will merge with 20-partner London IT firm Tarlo Lyons.



Senior partner Jonathan Lloyd-Jones has said that Blake Lapthorn Linnell is aiming to be a dominant firm in the south of England. ‘It is a tall challenge, but we see ourselves competing with firms such as Bond Pearce, Clarke Willmott, Osborne Clarke and Shoosmiths,’ he said. Such plans took a bit of a hit this month when it was revealed that Shoosmiths – which has a south coast office – had bagged the firm’s head of corporate tax, Niall Murphy.



‘Our footprint is much more than the south coast,’ insists Blake Lapthorn managing partner Walter Cha. ‘The firm has 80 partners and some 250 staff, with 160 in Oxford, 30 in London and the rest on the south coast. But we are not just confined to the area.’



But surely it is an unusual place for a law firm with national aspirations to be based? ‘We have located ourselves in Bristol and Southampton because we see those as two key commercial centres on our patch,’ says Mr Page. ‘We feel that, from both of those centres, we can reach up to Reading and from there to London where we have an office. We also comfortably cover Chichester and Brighton and even through to Weymouth.’



How important is the south coast to Blake Lapthorn Linnell? It is ‘crucial’, replies Mr Cha. ‘There are some very good firms in the area, which is always a good sign. It means that there is a great legal requirement that needs to be met on a local basis. There is good work here in terms of corporate mergers and acquisitions work, financing and banking, and real estate. We are one of the few firms not taking the view that private clients don’t fit into our portfolio – hence our merger with White & Bowker.’



Some wonder whether actually the firm has lost its focus. ‘I feel that they have lost a bit of their sense of direction,’ reckons Mr Page. ‘They were clearly heading down the same route as us but now, in joining up with White & Bowker, they have decided the private client is just as important.’



Certainly Southampton has proved a desirable location. Another firm on the move has been Winchester-based Dutton Gregory, which this month joined forces with Southampton practice Bell Pope. ‘We have been looking at a Southampton office for quite some time,’ says chief executive Michelle Tatner. ‘We view a presence there as being a springboard for the commercial side of our business.’ Commercial, as opposed to private client, represents slightly more than half (55%) of the firm’s workload.



Ms Tatner reports that smaller local practices have been subject to their own pressures that have contributed to an unsettling time in the market. The firm has regularly been approached by smaller practices looking to consolidate. ‘It has been amazing: over the last 18 months, we have been approached on an almost weekly basis,’ she says. ‘The smaller firms are finding it so difficult to do business.’ She reckons that the merger will now mean that the firm is two-thirds the size of another local heavyweight, Coffin Mew & Clover, which has four offices and 110 fee-earners in Hampshire (Southampton, Fareham, Portsmouth and Gosport).



Owen Santry, commercial services partner at Coffin Mew, reflects that the two major Winchester firms, White & Bowker and Dutton Gregory, have gone ‘in separate directions’ over the past 12 months. ‘They are clearly fixing their ambitions on going somewhere and good luck to them,’ he says. His firm is also growing and has taken on approximately 15 new fee-earners in the last six months. What is driving that? ‘Growth and investment in the area,’ Mr Santry replies. ‘We have taken a conscious decision to expand both in terms of growing the strengths the firm already has, and to some extent by taking on new skill sets.’ But he adds the aspiration for his firm is not to follow the Wragges-style national model, but to be ‘confirmed as a regional heavyweight’.



The area – with its commuter-belt accessibility, affluent Hampshire villages and ageing population in towns such as Bournemouth – makes for a strong private client component to much of the legal work. Graham Payne, senior partner at Eric Robinson, is based at the firm’s Chandler’s Ford office just outside Southampton. ‘You don’t get any houses for less than £250,000, so most people have inheritance tax problems and there is money to be made out of probate and tax planning,’ he says.



He is unconvinced by the need for consolidation via a merger. Instead, his nine-partner practice is sticking to the format of having a network of six local offices. ‘We are trying to bring the law to where people are and, with an ageing population, that appears to be working successfully,’ he says.



Trethowans has a total staff of 160 and is based in Southampton, where the commercial work is done, and Salisbury. One of the challenges managing partner Miles Brown identifies for his firm is ‘to recognise that Tesco law, RAC law – whatever you want to call it – is a real threat to firms’. He says: ‘We are looking long and hard at the different types of work to make absolutely sure we are not dependent upon work that can be turned into a commodity.’



In the private client context, Mr Brown calls the administration of estates ‘fairly low level’ and so argues that the firm needs to focus on tax planning. ‘I’m sure that clients who would want us to do their tax planning would also like us to do administration of estates, but you could see Tesco’s turning that into a commodity. We will never be able to compete with the brand that they have.’



‘Southampton and east Hampshire is probably one of the largest and wealthiest areas outside London and so there is an amazing amount of high-value work that comes out of this area,’ comments Gregory Townsend, senior clerk at leading Southampton set 17 Carlton Crescent. ‘There is a large number of headquarter offices based down here as well. If you look at Hampshire as a whole over the years, it has had some of the largest criminal and civil cases.’



In Southampton, the three barristers’ chambers line up in a row on Carlton Crescent: number 17 has 41 members and claims to be ‘probably the largest independent set of barristers in central, southern England’; next door, number 18 covers family, crime and civil with 27 tenants; and then College Chambers at number 19 is predominantly family. The biggest set claims its reach is regional. ‘We are a chambers that specialises in local and central government work,’ Mr Townsend says. ‘We act for authorities as far west as Land’s End and, for example, we are presently tendering for a best-value contract in Watford and Harpenden on the far side of London.’ Two current members have been appointed Queen’s Counsel.



Over in Winchester, there are two sets. ‘Part of the reason why there aren’t more chambers in the region is because the train service to London is relatively good and you find a lot of the work can be serviced from there,’ says Stuart Pringle, clerk at 3 Paper Buildings, which has 120 barristers (including 11 silks), at chambers in Bournemouth as well as London, Oxford and Bristol. He reckons that the combined number of barristers in Winchester and Southampton makes for a reasonably sized bar of ‘five chambers in relatively close proximity’. Two of the set’s members have just been made up to silk – Nigel Lickley and Christopher Parker.



How do the Winchester and Southampton courts compare? ‘They are both busy,’ Mr Pringle answers. ‘Winchester used to be a first-tier court and so gets a disproportionate amount of heavy work in relation to other courts. But the courts are very much combined and so barristers cover the area from here to Southampton and Portsmouth, and the county courts as well, which is about a 50-mile radius.’



Kings Bench Chambers is a 20-tenant strong common law set based in Bournemouth that was set up ten year ago. ‘One of the founding members lived down here and the other two had an inkling to get in some more yachting,’ explains clerk Alan Connor, who clerked in London for 33 years before making the move in 1997. ‘There is a lot of work down here,’ he continues. ‘But whether it could sustain another set of chambers is difficult to say because a lot of the London bar come down.’



Mr Pringle disagrees with the suggestion that the south coast’s main lure is for a quieter and more civilised life than the London bar. ‘It’s extremely competitive,’ he says. ‘A lot of the bar has realised there is good-quality work in the provinces. You don’t have to be based in London anymore. If anything, the younger bar is more aggressive and proactive outside London.’



Mr Connor reckons that problems in publicly funded family work mean that more London-based barristers are looking to the provinces. He fears that there is worse to come. ‘We tend to be six or seven years behind what happens in London, and if they feel the pinch it doesn’t hit immediately but eventually it comes down here. The Carter reforms are probably the worst we have had to face.’



It is a theme echoed by other south-coast chambers. ‘In terms of family, we have already found that a lot of our solicitors aren’t doing the work themselves anymore. If they aren’t doing it, then we aren’t,’ says Barbara Corbett, administrator at 18 Carlton Crescent. She describes the level of activity in chambers as ‘reasonable’ but could be better. ‘Some days the courts are busier than others,’ she reports. ‘It seems to go in fits and starts. Some days we will be struggling to cover everything and the next there will be nothing.’



Wayne Effeny, senior clerk at College Chambers, adds that the impact of the Carter reforms on family ‘would have a devastating effect on the bar’.

Jon Robins is a freelance journalist