Full throttle 

It’s an exhilarating time to be at DWF: since its 2007 merger with Ricksons the firm has gone from strength to strength. One trainee reminisced: “When I was offered the training contract at DWF it was 2007 and the firm was still relatively small. Now, we’re a bigger player and although there is obviously more pressure, it is equally exciting to be here.” Guy Wallis and current senior partner Jim Davies originally founded DWF in 1977 so this is still a relatively young firm, and it has a relatively young managing partner to match. Andrew Leaitherland took up the top job in 2006 at the tender age of 36 and has become what one trainee described as “the driving force of the firm.” The Ricksons merger provided DWF with new offices in Preston and Leeds, and in 2008 a London office was unveiled. Recently a new office has been launched in Newcastle, specialising predominantly in corporate and pensions work, and a Birmingham branch is in the works. The firm thought about a merger with Cobbetts in 2012, but uncertain market conditions have hampered any progress in that respect.

Rotation, Rotation, Rotation 

DWF’s seat system is currently undergoing a renovation. Previously, trainees would do four four-month seats and then one eight-month seat in a practice area they targeted for qualification. Now, they are being given the option of trying another four-month seat in a new area, with a sixth and final seat being in the desired area of qualification. According to partner David Blaquiere, “the norm will be that future trainees won’t do an eight-month stint in one seat” and our interviewees preferred this new structure, saying that it enabled them “to try a wide variety of practice areas,” which is “what a training contract is about in the first place.” Those who want to do an extra-long eight-month seat still can, however.

Trainees are hired to every office except Preston. As of September 2011, Manchester had 16, Liverpool had 12, there were eight in Leeds, six in London, and two in Newcastle. However, trainees do not have to stay in their ‘contract location’ for the full two years and can choose to take seats in other offices, if they are available. Many of the trainees we spoke to had spent seats elsewhere and found the experience beneficial, especially given that not every seat is available in every office.

A major bugbear of recent years has been addressed with the appointment of a new graduate programme manager, Kate Hasluck. Past trainees had become increasingly irritated by the lack of forewarning prior to seat rotation. Trainees often did not know where they were going to be placed until a couple of nights before the rotation – which obviously made things difficult if they were required to move offices. However, a new system has been implemented and trainees can now see a job list that publishes the next round of seat vacancies well in advance of the rotation. They then list up to five preferences and are given a few weeks to write a brief summary of the reason for their choices. “HR tries to match us up with our preferences as closely as possible. At the last rotation we were given three or four weeks' notice and found the whole process much calmer and more transparent.” Overall, DWF provides trainees with a respectable range of potential seats, spanning the firm’s seven main practice areas: corporate; family and private client; finance and restructuring; insurance; litigation; ‘people’ (that’s employment and pensions); and real estate.

Playing detective and dicing with death 

Insurance is at the core of DWF. It accounts for 45% of the firm’s total revenue and the department is ranked as one of the best outside London by Chambers UK. Insurance work covers a massive range of areas: catastrophic injury, counter fraud, environmental and pollution claims, product liability, professional negligence, property damage claims and road traffic accidents all fall under this banner – and that’s only an abridged list!

With so many different insurance teams, we can only touch on one or two. Many of our interviewees had completed a seat in occupational health, which involves some pretty horrible cases – we were told rather more than we wanted to know about ‘degloving’ incidents, in which people lose extensive sections of skin whilst performing manual tasks at work. DWF typically acts for either the insurance company or the defendant. One trainee detailed a case in which a claimant had allegedly been left unable to walk after an accident at work. “We uncovered strong surveillance evidence of the man in question quite happily walking around the supermarket,” said our source, “so obviously we won, which was a great feeling.” Trainees help to keep their supervisor's caseload ticking over, organise medical appointments and attend court hearings. DWF regularly acts on behalf of the defendant. Those working in the disease section of occupational health had utilised their latent detective skills by investigating asbestos-related claims that stem back to alleged exposure in the 70s. As many of the businesses in question have since gone into liquidation, establishing professional negligence is quite a task. “I had to go everywhere to find documents that would support our case and interview a lot of retired people,” said one trainee, “but I like investigative tasks so I was happy.” So if you see yourself as something of a Sherlock, this may be the seat for you.

Regulatory litigation is also a common insurance-related seat. It involves providing advice to companies in health and safety proceedings and manslaughter cases, and many trainees had spent a lot of time out of the office visiting construction sites and attending coroner’s inquests. One trainee wanted to emphasise that “you become very heavily involved in the case: if you’re acting for the family of the deceased then you want to give them closure, you want to get to the bottom of what happened.” This did not appeal to all our contacts, and one struggled to “adjust to dealing with people in extremely upsetting circumstances.”

So that’s why DWF goes to Iceland 

Real estate is one of the biggest practice areas at DWF. A Manchester partner recently led a DWF team in the acquisition of Kwik Save from Somerfield and the subsequent disposal of stores to Sainsbury's and Tesco; one in Liverpool advised the Merseyside Superannuation Fund on the disposal of its freehold interest in a London property – on Oxford Street, in fact – while lawyers over in Leeds acted for Persimmon Homes on the purchase of a site in York where it intends to develop 700 homes. Trainees in commercial property gained experience in tracking apartment sales and drafting leases and licences. Another sat over in the planning department and dealt with clients in the process of instigating large developments. Tasks involved drafting agreements with the local authority for planning permission and ensuring that the developer made an adequate contribution to open space legal agreements, which protect town and village greens. Our source was pleased with “the variety of work. There’s been a real mix and I’ve acted for both large developers and local councils.”

Employment is also very popular among trainees. One commented that the team is “manic – everything is a lot more frantic than the other seats I’ve done.” This fast pace was generally spoken about positively, with the rapid turnaround of cases creating a constant buzz. Trainees felt they gained a lot of experience, with the opportunity for advocacy arising in certain cases. Most matters involve accusations of unfair dismissal revolving around racial and sexual discrimination. Indeed, one trainee felt obliged to warn students thinking of working in this field to be prepared to deal with “crazy clients” who are “out of work and can rant away at you because the insurers are paying for everything.” The essential skill to possess in such circumstances is an unflagging level of patience. Other high points for our sources included being able to instruct counsel at tribunal hearings, and conducting settlement discussions on a partner’s behalf.

The corporate practice is perhaps not what DWF is most famous for but it certainly competes in Yorkshire and the North West, and recently recruited a team of lawyers from Watson Burton in Leeds. In 2010 the department worked on 47 transactions with an aggregate deal value of over £375m. Clients include Barrett Steel and the AIM-listed Paragon Diamonds. Meanwhile, the banking practice recently acted for Iceland Foods on the supermarket group’s £110m refinancing.

Movie night 

A point of concern raised in previous years was the disagreeable condition of the old Manchester office. It still haunts the memories of current trainees, with one describing the premises as "rather disgusting," while another noted the labyrinthine nature of the various floors: “We never saw each other.” Luckily, December 2010 saw the firm move into new and vastly superior digs on Hardman Street. Facilities available in this new office include a bistro, swish client facilities and even an auditorium which hosts regular cinema club activities. Fancy! A trainee was very relieved to announce that the site was “a lot cleaner and fresher” than the old one, and as staff are now spread over just three floors “you see a lot more people.” All in all, there is a definite sense of contentment in Manchester at the moment.

The Liverpool and Leeds offices are the “spit and image of one another” in that they provide a comparable level of “high-standard facilities” and have similar open-plan layouts. The Liverpool office is situated in the chic St Paul’s Square development, while the Leeds gang are in Yorkshire’s tallest building, Bridgewater Place, nicknamed ‘the Dalek’ because of its distinctive shape. No doubt DWF will be hoping to exterminate its rivals in the city. The London office celebrated its third birthday in summer 2011 and is now recruiting its own trainees. One commented that “we are outgrowing the premises fast – there’s hardly any space left and we need to start looking around for something else.” The other offices may be “swanky and new,” but one Preston-based trainee enthused about the “old-school-law-firm feel” of the building, which allows trainees to have their own room and access it via a “grand staircase.”

In January 2011 the trainees were invited to a bi-annual dinner with the chief exec, Andrew Leaitherland, who was “very interested in our feedback.” It was an opportunity for trainees to become further acquainted with the DWF’s long-term goals and future strategy, and they certainly seemed pretty informed about the game plan in our conversations with them. “Watch this space,” our sources said, predicting more lateral hires, continued emphasis on organic growth, and more teams in the London office before long, including family and commercial insurance groups.

Kung fu lawyering 

“I genuinely do feel that the staff come before the work at DWF. We are more than just a number here – they are interested in you and your life,” said one trainee. David Blaquiere corroborated this, plainly stating: “We don’t kill our trainees here,” and interviewees drove home that DWF is a “personality-driven” firm that recruits on the basis of well-rounded academic and personal achievement. “We’re not your one-dimensional intellectual types – although a good academic record is essential – and the people who tend to get recruited here have many outside interests besides the law, which makes for an interesting and diverse work environment.”

As it has the most trainees, Manchester is naturally one of the more active offices socially. Its events committee has organised an Alice in Wonderland-themed sports social and several nights out to a local comedy store. The other offices usually make just as much of an effort: Leeds trainees attended the annual Leeds Law Society Dinner and have been known to organise spa weekends, while a London trainee had made that extra effort by planning a night out for all DWF trainees in Manchester, providing a perfect opportunity for everyone to reconnect and get to know each other better. An established tradition across all offices is ‘Friday Fridge’, which occurs on the last Friday of every month and involves everyone dressing casually for the day, then “gathering at around 5pm and heading to a fridge filled with free alcohol.” Everyone donates a pound to charity and drinks guilt-free.

And finally... 

We’ve been tracking NQ retention at DWF since 2002 and have noticed that in all that time it has never let more than two second-years go on qualification. In 2011 it superseded this excellent trend, retaining 16 out of 16 qualifiers.