Bristol fashion

As a city once renowned for its ships and slave trade, Jeremy Fleming finds that Bristol now has a competitive legal market drawing clients from around the UK

With its proximity to the countryside, good communication links by air, road and rail, two universities and a plethora of clubs, restaurants and cultural activities, Bristol is one of the most attractive cities in England.

But it lags behind other bulwarks like Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in terms of its corporate punch.

Unlike those rivals, it was never a hothouse of the industrial revolution - it specialised in ships and slaves.

Nevertheless, it has always been a flourishing legal centre, and firms such as Burges Salmon, Osborne Clarke, Bond Pearce, Clarke Willmott, Bevan Ashford and TLT are all well-known names on the legal landscape.

Bristol's firms also display a great variety in approach and strategy.

Burges Salmon, for example, is happy being in one location, a pleasant office by the docks.

Although the firm has recently enhanced its presence in London, it identifies this as an office for its clients rather than one staffed by lawyers.

However, despite being firmly planted in Bristol, the firm is not keen to be perceived solely as a south-west firm.

Senior partner Richard Wynn-Jones says that 70% of the firm's clients come from 'outside the west of England'.

He says: 'This is a big change that has taken place over the past nine years or so.

Back then, we were still acting predominantly for local concerns.

Now we're doing agri-business, projects, private finance initiatives and railway work.'

He says Burges Salmon's strategy of remaining a single-site practice has been vindicated by the downturn, which he claims has exposed difficulties for multi-site firms.

'The problem is that if you have more than one centre, there is more scope for rivalry over work to emerge in a downturn when the work is more fiercely fought over.'

Osborne Clarke could not be more different in appearance from its Bristol rivals, with more than 100 partners based in the City of London, Bristol, Reading, Cologne, Frankfurt and Silicon Valley, in California.

The difference is accentuated by the style of building it occupies - a glimmering glass structure in a newly developed dock site with completely open-plan interior and glass lifts.

Behind this shimmering faade there have been problems - the firm was honest about having to let 30 lawyers go around Christmas last year on account of the downturn.

Rival lawyers allege that Osborne Clarke has expanded too rapidly, that it has staged an expansion policy akin to DLA's - only five years too late - and that from time to time there have been internal battles for work between its domestic offices.

But leading corporate partner Paul Cooper bats away these suggestions nimbly.

'We're back on an even keel,' he says.

'We might have made more money than we have made if we had not pursued an expansionist policy - especially in relation to Europe - but in the long term it was the right thing to do.'

As to the suggestion of rivalry between Osborne Clarke's offices, Mr Cooper says: 'If we have problems, we get the boys in and talk about it.' Fellow corporate partner Dan Wright adds: 'We are a similar bunch, we get happily pissed together.'

Ironically, considering some of the other Bristol firms emphasise how much of their work comes from outside the region, Osborne Clarke is keen to stress how Bristol is key to its deals.

Mr Cooper says: 'No matter how many offices a firm has, or where they are, it's important that you don't lose touch with the locality.

In our view, you let go of your roots at your peril.

We are involved in local charities, we go to the parties and the pubs.

We are part of the community down here.'

The departure from Bevan Ashford last month of Ann Conway-Hughes - the non-lawyer chief executive, who made way for partner Stuart Whitfield - triggered raised eyebrows in the city.

Ms Conway-Hughes was brought in 18 months ago as a breath of fresh air to deal with perceived weaknesses in the firm's management and strategy.

The firm said she stood down 'following the successful completion of a major internal change programme and strong end-of-year-results'.

Bevan Ashford has a well-reported difficulty of trying to unify a string of offices which have - to all intents and purposes - a dual identity.

On the one hand, there is the Bristol office, which with the firm's Birmingham and London offices forms a kind of corporate triangle.

Then a string of smaller offices further west - Exeter, Plymouth, Taunton and Tiverton - have a different work profile and management structure, and handle their profits separately.

Gordon Bon - one of the four heads of division in the Bristol office who assist the new chief executive - says Ms Conway-Hughes' departure followed good organisational changes, and insists that the approach that she brought to the firm will not be forgotten.

'We are now ready for a period of consolidation - to let management reforms bed down, and then look to expansion again,' he says.

Mr Bon says this will involve the firm making itself an attractive proposition for collaborating with others, or taking on a lot of new lawyers for 'more than steady paced growth'.

This will, he acknowledges, mean ironing out some of those issues relating to the multi-site nature of the firm.

Away from Bevan Ashford's noisy management issues, the firm has a stable flow of government work, notably in healthcare, that makes it slightly detached from the corporate work of Burges Salmon, Osborne Clarke et al.

However, Bevan Ashford's NHS-based work has suffered as a result of radical change in the government's approach - attempting to slash the amount of health litigation - and the firm recently had to let some of this team go.

Mr Bon says that doing these things is unpleasant, but 'whilst being as supportive as possible to those affected when market conditions change, you have to maintain morale for the remaining people'.

It is no surprise to discover that Mr Bon's background is in restructuring.

He is clear about the type of partnership Bevan Ashford needs to be to keep up - it is the kind where partners are kept on their toes.

He mentions tentatively the benefits of penalising partners who are late in billing for work.

The polarisation between big and small firms in Bristol is more marked than in many cities.

Outside of the big practices, there are few with more than a handful of partners, while the likes of Clarke Willmott and Bevan Ashford have expanded in part through acquiring small local practices.

Lyons Davidson, Meade-King and Metcalfes are among the few at around ten partners.

Bristol is also home to a handful of regional offices for London firms, such as CMS Cameron McKenna, Masons and Russell Jones & Walker, while the major Cardiff firms such as Hugh James and Palser Grossman also have a presence.

And what effect has the national economic downturn had in Bristol? Osborne Clarke's Mr Cooper says his workload has picked up in the last 12 months.

'I'm acting for a household name on a 100 million disposal, two acquisitions for a listed company and the 20 million disposal of a business here in the south-west.

We've got a management buy-out completing today and another completed yesterday,' he says.

His colleague, Mr Wright, adds: 'There are signs this calendar year of an alteration in mood - the doom and gloom has been replaced by reality.'

At 25-partner Veale Wasbrough, managing partner Simon Pizzey echoes the optimistic outlook.

He says: 'The corporate department has been busy on some of the biggest deals emanating from the region, but there have been a few big deals going through which have put the firm on the map.' The sale of Thornbury Nursing Services to Duke Street Capital for around 55 million - in which Veales acted for Thornbury - was the largest deal in the south-west last year, the firm says.

Mr Pizzey adds: 'Although deals may be taking longer to go through, we haven't really noticed any slowing-up of activity.'

However, if the downturn really starts to bite harder in the regions, Veale Wasbrough's investment in its public sector work should pay dividends.

It claims to be the only firm in Bristol which has won panel places on two of the choice government work distributors: the Ministry of Defence - which has a large procurement centre near Bristol at Abbey Wood, and which provides work to a number of Bristol firms - and the Treasury Solicitor which hands out work from the Treasury and the new Office of Government Commerce business solutions panel - set up for the provision of legal services to government.

In fact, Bristol firms figure largely on government panels and every top firms appears on at least one.

All the lawyers say recruitment is not a problem in Bristol.

Burges Salmon's Mr Wynn-Jones says: 'Bristol's attractiveness and the talent pool created by the universities in the town mean that there are always enough clever people to choose from.'

Mr Pizzey adds: 'It's become an employer's market in the last year and there has been good competition for all the places we have needed to fill, including trainees.'

Bristol may have dealt in slaves in the past, but it certainly does not work its lawyers to the bone.

And that - along with the thriving local legal market - is likely to keep a steady flow of migrants arriving from the City.

The Law Society in Bristol

Bristol has long been home to the Law Society's headquarters for the south-west and its new offices are set to open formally on 2 July by Law Society President Carolyn Kirby.

Headed up by the regional manager, Mary Jackson, and with a staff of three, the office engages in a number of activities aimed at serving and promoting the interests of all local lawyers in the area.

The stronger focus on the office is part of the new regional development programme agreed by the Law Society Council and underlines the Society's strategy of offering services closer to where solicitors live and work.

Facilities at the new office include a modern seminar room, which will be used to stage courses and lectures for the profession, and will be available to hire at a substantial discount for local firms.

Other activities of the office will include pro bono development - one of the first events pencilled into the diary was a pro bono breakfast, held this week involving the senior partners from Bristol's key firms.

The office will also be used by the Law Society's groups - such as the Young Solicitors Group, which is meeting there in October for a roadshow - and to disseminate national initiatives, such as one to inform the profession of changes to stamp duty legislation, which will also take place later this year.

The south-west regional office is situated at 27-29 Baldwin Street Bristol BS1 1LT.

For further details contact: elizabeth.dyer@lawsociety.org.uk