WEIGHTMANS LAW FIRM HAILS RECORD RESULTS AS TURNOVER TOPS £140M

North West law firm Weightmans has hailed its most successful year to date after seeing turnover top £140m.

The Liverpool company, which employs more than 1,500 people across offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, London, Manchester and Newcastle, said its income increased by 12% to hit £140m while net profit rose 41.1% to £18m, which marked a record for the business. Profit per equity partner is £391,000 for the 12-month period.

The company, which returned to a hybrid way of working with more people returning to its offices in the prior year, merged with RadcliffesLeBrasseur in 2022, a move which saw it create seven key client segments. It said strong results were delivered by all the firm’s client segments. Six of the divisions - built environment, health, individuals, insurance, OMB (owner managed businesses) and public bodies, all produced double digit growth in revenues, while its corporate department grew by 6%.

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John Schorah, managing partner, said that major financial and commercial success was reported during the year, especially within its employment, property litigation, regulatory and specialty insurance services. During the year the firm also launched CyXcel, a new cyber consulting business which brings together legal and technical cyber expertise, which it said had exceeded all strategic objectives, with rapid growth including expansion into North America last month.

Weightmans promoted 15 people to the partnership during the year, bringing the firm’s total number of partners to 248, and 12 to legal director. The firm also saw 15 lateral partners join in the year. The overall performance means that all staff will benefit from a bonus of almost £3,000 each - a payment the firm said recognises everyone’s contribution to the firm’s successful year.

Mr Schorah said: “I am very proud of all the hard work and contributions made by our people to make this our most successful year ever. Their talent and unwavering support for each other continues to deliver great results for our clients and places the business in a very strong position as we make progress towards being a Top 30 law firm.

“The merger with RadcliffesLeBrasseur in 2022 has delivered significant organic growth for the firm in the second-year post merger in those areas we have combined, as well as delivering cost saving synergies. Independently of the merger we have also seen our other core areas do well.

“Of course, our financial figures are only part of our story, and it is great to see that our investment in our people continued to be recognised as we maintained our Top Employer status in the top 10 and our Top 75 Employer Index ranking at number 20. We are proud that this demonstrates our ongoing commitment to making law as accessible as possible through our various graduate and apprenticeship schemes, and intern programmes.

“The hard work has started again this year, and I am excited to see what we achieve together.”

The company has changed its financial reporting year, which ran to an 11-month period ending March 31, 2024. It said for that 11-month period income increased to £128.44m and net profit was £16.49m. It added the firm’s financial performance for April to deliver figures for the full year.

2024-07-02T14:48:51Z dg43tfdfdgfd