Thring Townsend Lee & Pembertons

The M4 corridor and beyond

The TTLP story began at the turn of the millennium when Swindon firm Thring & Long and Bath outfit Townsends joined forces. Five years later Laytons’ Bristol office was added to the mix. A sweeping SW empire is one thing, but an SW1 postcode is quite another and in 2007 the firm got exactly this thanks to a merger with 200-year-old Westminster private client specialist Lee & Pemberton, pushing the firm up another level. Most recently, TTLP merged with niche private client practice Wood, Awdry & Ford, adding offices in Marlborough, Chippenham and Cirencester as well as access to a cartload of wealthy Wiltshire and Cotswold folks.

The worsening economic climate saw all three Wood, Awdry & Ford offices close at the beginning of 2009 and the relocation of 25 people to Swindon in an effort to save around £1m in overheads. Managing partner Thomas Sheppard has described the move as “people over property… we have tried to prioritise protecting jobs rather than offices.” The decision illustrates that despite the firm’s growth – TTLP broke into the top 100 UK firms in 2008 and has an annual turnover exceeding £20m – and its increasingly commercial direction, staff welfare is still a priority. “It’s one big happy family here,” beamed a satisfied trainee. “There is definitely no whispering behind closed doors.” All the senior partners “were really open and honest about what was going on, so people didn’t panic.” There are quarterly meetings specifically for trainees and associates to learn about “profits, budgets and why the partnership make certain decisions.” Understandably these have proved particularly popular lately.

While “the firm’s movement is down a commercial route” and trainees are confident that TTLP wants to expand, they say: “It doesn’t want to be a law firm that just does everything. We will still have our specialist areas in personal injury, private client and agriculture.” Trainees can do seats in all of these, although business needs play a part in what’s available from year to year. A client secondment at Future Publishing is also on offer. Merging with a London practice was “not about conquering the capital but about providing a convenient location for our clients,” said our sources. When we spoke to graduate recruitment partner Brian Jacomb, he agreed: “We are always going to be a balanced practice with agriculture spanning both [commercial and private client] sides of the business.” The South West is still where the firm’s heart lies; indeed, according to one interviewee, “I’d say it was embedded in the community.” Apparently, even the London office has “got the South West way of doing things.”

All four office locations host trainees. The majority split their time between the three in the South West, but the London office recruited two trainees of its own last year. “In some respects we are slightly out of the loop in London,” admitted a source in the capital, “but less so as trainees because we are encouraged to go to Swindon a lot for meetings and training to ensure integration.” The firm’s view on training in the capital is that “there is no hard and fast policy on where trainees spend their time. We have asked those who are currently in the South West offices if they want to spend time in London, and one London trainee is heading to Swindon for a seat next year.” There are rooms full of hot desks for people to come and go, so moving between offices is very much part of the firm culture and trainees quickly get used to whizzing up and down the M4.

No wasted energy

TTLP’s commercial property team is spread across all of its offices and is one of the largest in the south of England, so consequently trainees are likely to spend time here. The team handles almost every aspect of real estate and trainees get access to “really wide-ranging work,” often acting as the main contact on smaller files. Major clients include Hamptons Estate Agents and EDF Energy. A new relationship has been struck up with Cyclamax, a business that specialises in turning waste into energy. Thring Townsend represented the company in its acquisition of 300,000 square feet of units to be used in waste energy processing. There is also a growing construction department and the firm has a Chambers UK-ranked property litigation team that again is one of the largest in the region.

The lawyers in the company commercial department “get their heads down and work some of the longest hours but do know how to have a giggle.” Trainees split their time between writing terms and conditions for businesses and helping with transactions. The team acts for a number of banks, assisting them with corporate due diligence, and was appointed to HSBC’s commercial panel for the South West last year. As yet there are not many junior staff in the London office, so trainees “do a lot of the lower-level work.” Said one: “I was working quite long hours going through all the due diligence.”

Family-friendly

The Swindon-based personal injury department is topranked by Chambers UK in its region and specialises in complex high-value catastrophic injury and industrial disease claims. The industrial disease group is particularly recognised for its work on mesothelioma claims, a form of lung cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. It can be quite emotional work as “many of the clients do not have long left to live and want to provide for their families. They put a lot of trust and faith in you.” Ultimately the work is rewarding and the team regularly secures millions of pounds of compensation for its clients.

Members of the family department “go out of their way” for trainees. The “close team” provides them with a lot of client contact (just like in PI this can be “quite emotional”) and the seat is known for its regular court visits for divorce and ancillary relief claims. TTLP no longer handles legal aid cases, preferring to concentrate on private payers, an increasing number of whom have either been resident abroad or own assets abroad. The merger with Lee & Pembertons strengthened the agricultural practice, bringing the family team new challenges in the form of farming divorces, as well as making it the largest ‘standalone’ agriculture practice in the country. Clients range from the owners of landed estates and large farms to the Country Landowner’s Association and the NFU and its members.

Café culture

The Swindon office is open plan while the older Bath office is a mixture of open plan and individual rooms. Both have popular cafés that provide free breakfast to those who arrive before 8.30am. On Fridays staff can tuck into a “full works” fry-up. The Bristol office moved in September 2009 to “brand new, open-plan premises right in the centre of the city. We have the two top floors with a balcony.” The all-important café was not forgotten. The London office is sadly sans eatery but its location right next to Trafalgar Square means “you can access everything.”

TTLP is a ‘lifestyle’ firm in the best sense of the word. Not only is it applauded for its excellent work-life balance, but our interviewees were adamant that it will draw anyone in to its warm culture. Said one: “If you want to just come in and work and then go home, you aren’t going to fit in here.” Trainees regularly meet up for lunch and go out together after work, and there are also numerous marketing events for them to become “heavily involved in.” Regular firm-wide events include London theatre trips and an annual Christmas party. “Always a really swanky do,” the Christmas bash is an employee-only event (including incoming trainees) but “for most of the things we arrange, you can bring your family along too.”

And finally...

It is no wonder that at such a “friendly, approachable and non-stuffy” firm the general consensus among trainees was: “I think everyone plans on being here long-term.” What a good thing then that five out of six qualifiers were offered jobs in 2009.