Berrymans Lace Mawer (BLM) is attempting to rebuild its shattered commercial litigation practice in Manchester following the loss of its general commercial litigation practice to a start-up. BLM's commercial litigation head Tony Brook and commercial litigation partner Chris Pugh left BLM with two assistants to set up a modern niche commercial practice last month.The pair founded the new Manchester firm, Nexus, with corporate partners Stephen Isherwood and Jamie Lloyd from Beachcroft Wansbroughs, and Turner Parkinson's commercial property head Des O'Driscoll. 'We have taken all the non-insurance litigation work we had in the Manchester office,' said Mr Pugh. BLM has appointed John Henthorn, personal injury (PI) partner and commercial litigation partner Mark Benson to co-manage the depleted non-PI litigation department.BLM office head Nigel Roden said the department would continue to act mainly for insurance defendants. 'We are carrying on exactly as we were before,' he said. Mr Henthorn added: 'Our insurance commercial litigation practice is unaffected.'Mr Henthorn described the group as a 'self-contained unit', adding: 'They have gone and they have taken one or two agreed clients with them.' Mr Pugh said that Nexus plans to grow cautiously: 'The firms that we think we will be taking work from are firms like Turner Parkinson, but we will be taking work from larger practices.'The larger firms in Manchester are leaving small and medium-sized companies behind. They are moving up market and they are losing sight of the market place on which they built their services.' Anne Mizzi