Like a red Wragge to a bull
Wragge & Co is still very much the Big Daddy of the Birmingham legal market. Three-quarters of its 400 fee earners are based there; the rest are mostly in London with some overseas too. New offices in Paris and Abu Dhabi were opened in 2010, adding to ones in Guangzhou, Munich and Brussels.
But Wragges wants more. The London office is expanding and moving away from its role of being a 'feeder' office for Birmingham. There is now also talk of a London merger. All this on the back of the down years of the recession when revenue fell by a fifth over two years. Revenue recovered somewhat in 2010/11, rising 16% to £110m, reinvigorating the firm's ambition to break into the UK top 20.
The firm acts for classic British brands such as Marmite, Birds Eye, Dyson and Marks & Spencer. It offers a range of practice areas based around litigation, property and corporate. A seat in each of these groups is compulsory, but all three are open to pretty broad interpretation. Tax, finance, projects, non-contentious construction and M&A all count as corporate seats, while the contentious options are finance litigation, construction litigation and general commercial litigation. Property includes residential development; retail and leisure; development and planning; and property litigation seats (the last can count as a property seat too). Other options include IP; IT; competition and trade; and employment/pensions.
Most trainees are based in Birmingham, with a handful recruited into London each year. The London training contract was only launched in 2009 but is already running smoothly and is run by experienced supervisors and Birmingham HR staff. There are obviously less seat options in London than in Brum, but all trainees are “perfectly happy” with the “structured” and “transparent” seat allocation system. The firm chooses your first seat, and after that listens to trainee preferences at each rotation. There were no overseas seats at the time of our calls, although they are in the pipeline for 2012 or 2013.
Bowled over
The real estate market may still be sluggish, but Wragges' property department has plenty of work. Clients include national businesses like Persimmon Homes, B&Q, British Airways, Waitrose, Argos and the HSBC Bank Pension Trust. Residential development is “extremely busy,” with everyone “rushed off their feet.” Trainees work “8am to 7 or 8pm, sometimes pushing back to 9 or 10pm” and “get a fair bit of responsibility early on. There are still the admin tasks like form-filling, but photocopying is always catered for by the secretaries.” You can read more about the firm's property work in our bonus feature.
Actually, Wragges was hit by the property downturn in more ways than one. The firm was due to move into Birmingham's new Snowhill development when it was completed in 2011. The cranes halted their work because of the recession, though it's a sign of the times that “the development has recently started again.” Wragges' office move is now expected to occur in late 2012 or 2013.
The corporate department acts for both private and public companies. Besides UK-based work – including advising CBPE Capital on a £20m investment in AMF Bowling to create the UK’s largest ten-pin bowling business – some work has an international flavour. The firm advised Lloyds TSB Development Capital on the $100m sale of its stake in the Cable Management Group to US electrics company Thomas & Betts, for example. “It has lived up to my expectation that I'd be stretched,” said one source. “I worked on big projects where I got discrete responsibilities of my own, like dealing with lawyers overseas.” Trainees take on “a lot of research, write up notes of meetings and sort out Companies House queries. As you progress in the seat you get more drafting. There is also the low-level menial work, but I didn't mind that much.” The hours can be taxing. “It was completely up and down: sometimes we leave at 6.30pm, sometimes it's 9pm or 10pm or as late as midnight.”
A stint in banking and finance can be pretty “busy” – lawyers here have a similar work ethic to their corporate peers. “It's quite different to banking and finance departments at bigger firms,” one trainee explained. “The seat incorporates asset finance, leveraged finance, restructuring and insolvency. It's also mid-market – deals start from £50m – which really benefits the trainee experience.” The team advised long-standing client Dyson on a £350m refinancing, including a £270m loan from HSBC, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank and Australia's ANZ. One of the projects team's biggest recent matters, meanwhile, saw the firm advise the Waste Recycling Group on its successful bid to design, build and operate a £145m waste-to-energy facility in Lincolnshire.
One of the commercial litigation team's biggest recent cases was acting for developer CPC in a breach of contract claim against Qatari Diar, which broke an agreement to buy part of the Chelsea Barracks redevelopment. The case made national headlines and involved third-party disclosure against the Prince of Wales. Wragge & Co lawyers also defended Morrisons in a £21m claim over an insurance agreement related to its advertising campaigns, and they have also have acted for Balfour Beatty, E.ON, Mercedes, Chubb Insurance and the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. Teams are “quite small,” meaning “as a trainee you get more responsibility” and “you become more a part of a team.” They attend client meetings, write up meeting notes, “attend trials and assist counsel,” “draft parts of witness statements” and “do the legwork like making bundles.” Attending court to observe or assist counsel is common. Financial litigation, construction litigation and employment tend to have large cases, but trainees also get small files to run.
The 'smaller' departments like employment/pensions, intellectual property and competition are still pretty sizeable – there are over 50 employment lawyers and around 30 IP lawyers. The latter stepped in on behalf of Unilever to stop the British National Party using a jar of Marmite in one of its 2010 party election broadcasts. Other IP clients include GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Mothercare and the Liberal Democrat party.
Wragge week
Trainees appreciated Wragges' sociability, lack of hierarchy, openness and the attention paid to training. We probably shouldn’t over-egg the firm's loveliness though. “Sometimes Wragges has pitched itself a bit too childishly with the flowers and gingerbread men,” one trainee opined – referring to a graduate recruitment campaign which involving handing out several tons of baked goods. “In the past I think we've been described as the 'cuddly Brummie' firm, but I really want to say that's not true any more.” Wragges isn't a soft touch: as we've already noted, “it's hard work. When there is a trial looming litigation trainees are working all the hours that God sends.”
Now that's we've assured you that this is a hard-working and businesslike firm, we can tell you a bit about why trainees also think it's such an enjoyable place to work. “Even during work the partners will have a laugh with you just as much as the trainees will. And everyone does the tea round in my team.” Another source added: “The office is open-plan, so from day one you are sat at the same size desk as a partner who is a leader in their field. That breaks down the hierarchy. With one partner I would spend ten to 15 minutes every morning chatting about football, or rugby, or music, or our favourite curry houses.”
Sources praised the on-the-job and formal training at Wragges. “My impression before joining was that this firm really invests time in its trainees and it has definitely lived up to that expectation.” There's training when you join a department, “and many teams have meetings with regular updates on things developing in their area of law.” Besides seat supervisors, each trainee has a partner principal who guides them throughout the training contract and meets with them on a regular basis. All in all, “the firm is good at making sure they churn out good qualified lawyers at the end of the training contract.”
Another point of appeal is the firm's “open and honest” approach. There are numerous lines of communication between management and the lower orders, including The Daily Wraggle, an intranet newsletter; the monthly 'people first' meeting “in which a representative from every team can raise queries anonymously on behalf of team members;” and a monthly 'chat room' with senior partner Quentin Poole and managing partner Ian Metcalfe. “It's live for an hour. People can sign in and ask questions of Quentin and Ian and they will get back to you immediately.”
Team socials come along “every couple of months – drinks, a bowling night or a picnic – and we have a trainee committee which organises events,” one source told us. “Most people live within walking distance of the office, which allows for an active social life. On an informal basis we'll have Friday or midweek drinks, and there are firm football, netball, cricket, tag rugby and even ultimate frisbee teams.” The firm-wide Christmas party is “really good. You are invited even before you start the training contract. This year the guys with the masks from Britain's Got Talent [Faces of Disco, we presume] performed, and the year before it was a partner's rock band.” The highlight of 2011's calendar is a sell-out performance by the newly formed Wragge & Co choir. “They've sold tickets for charity. I've got mine!” said one source. What's their repertoire, we asked. “It's more Glee-style pop than classic choral music.” Dress-down days, a pub quiz, a Birmingham-London bike ride and cake bakes have all raised moolah for the firm's charity of the year, Macmillan Cancer Support. While we're assured that participation in the active social life is optional not obligatory, the people who will enjoy their time most – and be successful at the firm – are obviously those who want to be able to get stuck in to all kinds of extracurricular activities.
Capital idea, old chap
The London office picks up over a dozen rankings of its own in Chambers UK. It does some pretty high-profile capital-oriented work – advising TfL on the introduction of the 'Boris bike' scheme. The firm clearly wants to build on this. Work is no longer just won in London and shipped up to Birmingham: the office at the very edge of the Square Mile is now winning and doing work for itself. “London will grow and thrive and bring in work and it's a springboard for the international offices,” one trainee proffered, “but the mothership will remain Birmingham.”
The trainee experience in the City is a little different to that in Brum. Trainees said they worked longer hours, and one commented: “I don't think London is as sociable as it could be for trainees, because there are fewer of us. But I think that's something that will change as the number of trainees here grows.”
In June 2011 the firm let slip that it was seeking a merger with a top-50 London firm. Senior partner Quentin Poole told The Lawyer: “We’re open to a potential London merger, provided that it will strategically give us something that we don’t already have or will strengthen our existing portfolio. A full-service mid-tier firm probably wouldn’t work for us.” At the time we went to press there was nothing specific on the horizon, but training partner Baljit Chohan told us: “London will certainly be a bigger part of the firm in the future. The partnership is more focused on the market than on geography.”
Wragge & Co is pretty good at keeping on its qualifiers. In summer 2011 there were more jobs on offer than there were qualifiers (there were fewer trainees than usual because of deferrals in the recession). A total of 17 of 22 stayed with the firm in 2011.
And finally...
Wragge & Co aims to be a UK top-20 firm. A London merger might just help it realise that ambition.