New Practice: Birkenhead firm launches with promise to donate 2% of income to charity and give lawyers a slice of bills

Partners at a recently launched north-west law firm have contractually committed to paying a minimum of 2% of the practice’s turnover to charities and other good causes.


All employees, including support staff, at Brunswicks – a specialist firm advising health and social care providers – have also undertaken to do pro bono work.


The Birkenhead-based firm was set up in January this year by Keith Lewin, a former partner and latterly consultant in the Liverpool office of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, and regulatory specialist Andrew Dawson, a partner in the UK/US firm’s Leeds office. Mr Lewin has just completed a period of gardening leave to take up the reins as senior partner of the new practice this month.


Brunswicks’ third partner is litigator Gareth Edwards, who founded Birkenhead firm Edwards Jones and is still involved with that practice on a part-time basis.


The firm’s clients include care home providers, hospitals, and charitable and other not-for-profit organisations, as well as special, residential and public schools.


Mr Lewin said he wanted the firm to be very different from what has gone before, and that his colleagues felt the same way.


‘We all regard ourselves as extremely fortunate members of society and we wanted to give something back,’ he said. ‘I felt we should write it into our constitutional documents so that we would be contractually bound to paying out to charity.’


He said the 2% sum was the minimum that would be donated, and that in a good year it could reach 4% or more.


‘It is about putting hard cash into a number of worthy causes, about putting things back in a very direct way,’ he suggested.


So far the firm has made donations to Action on Elder Abuse and The Butterfly Project, a bereavement counselling service for children.


Mr Lewin added that in a bid to differentiate itself further in the marketplace, Brunswicks had put in place a remuneration structure that he felt would encourage teamwork. The Birkenhead-based firm is in the process of recruiting lawyers with commercial property and employment skills as part of a controlled expansion.


He added: ‘One of the things I have seen in the big firms is that the rainmakers are looked after quite well, probably to the detriment of the technicians. I want to see technicians come to us and want to stay with us.’


Profits are distributed in two portions – 80% in accordance with the firm’s lockstep structure and 20% in a blend of measures which reflect each partner’s contribution to the firm. Meanwhile, 4% of each invoice will be set aside to be paid to the partner(s) who secured the client to the firm, irrespective of whether they worked on a matter or not, to encourage cross-selling. For non-partners, the 4% will be placed into an account and paid to them when they become a partner, which Mr Lewin said would help to pay their capital contribution.


Mr Lewin said the firm had also made a significant investment in technology to enable staff to work flexibly.