Member Article

A Firm hold on the North

At the end of last year, Carlisle based law firm Butterworths Solicitors joined forces with Cinnamon Property Lawyers, the North East’s conveyancing specialist based in Gateshead.

Bringing the two firms together has combined the skills and vision demonstrated by both firms management into an experienced leadership team ready to drive the firm forward in 2012 and beyond.

Butterworths Senior Partner, Tony Butterworth commented “Butterworths already has a strong presence in the North West with offices in Carlisle, Penrith and Bury however expansion into the North East provides opportunity to reach a market we’re previously never tapped into”.

Tony continued “consolidation of our share in the North East conveyancing market built up by Cinnamon remains priority, however development of our private client and business services to ensure Butterworths becomes the firm of choice for savvy consumers seeking high-quality, value-driven legal services will also become our focus”.

As conveyancing specialists currently in the top 50 firms nationally in terms of volume, Butterworths are members of the Conveyancing Association and hold Law Society Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) accreditation, a recognised quality standard for residential conveyancing practices.

Whilst residential conveyancing and other private client services remain high on the list, development of business services is at the top of the agenda with commercial property, developer services and lender services all in the spotlight.

In addition, Butterworths is launching a niche service in relation to Financial Claims arising from Interest Rate Swaps mis-sold by banks and financial institutions. As a founder member of QA Legal, an association of solicitors, barristers and financial services professionals, Butterworths is in a position to ensure its clients have access to the very best advice in this complex financial area.

With the firm pushing ahead with new, market-leading services its image is undergoing a refresh overseen by Butterworths Operations and Marketing manager, Vikki Todd.

Vikki reveals “The Butterworths brand is currently being refreshed to both reflect the quality of legal services we offer and increase appeal to our identified target markets. With our new website ready to launch to increase our online presence and our emphasis on internal relationship marketing we are confident that our strategy will enable us to meet our growth objectives”.

Whilst Butterworths are in the immediate going for growth through direct client acquisition, what about the future plans?

Partner for Gateshead John Cook explains “the new combined firm has the strength to compete in what is no doubt going to be a tough legal services market in the coming years. We won’t try to do everything and we’re hugely focussed on our key target areas. In the longer term our growth strategy will encompass the acquisition of small practices with quality caseloads and non-traditional alliances where lawyers may wish to have the freedom of being self-employed without the burden of managing their own practice.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Vikki Todd .