 | Happy New Year! I'm delighted to tell you that we've had a great start to 2008, as on 1 January we merged with Courts & Co, a long-established London practice with highly experienced lawyers and some great clients, which is what attracted us to them. The merger accelerates our expansion in London and brings our total number of partners to 58 and our total number of staff to almost 400. The merger adds further strength and depth to our Corporate, Real Estate, Planning, Employment and Litigation departments. As part of our growth strategy in London, we have also acquired brand new offices in New Fetter Lane. Our whole London operation will move to these prestigious new premises in March and we look forward to seeing you there.
We were delighted to see the firm's achievements recognised nationally in 2007 when we were named Best Managed Firm 2007 at the MPF Practice Management Awards. Previous winners of the award include global law firm DLA, and accountants Deloitte and BDO Stoy Hayward.
In addition to signing up to new offices in London we acquired 30,000 square feet in Gatwick during 2007 and established Gainsborough House as our regional centre for the South East. Gatwick acts as a regional base for all the major banks, accountants and other professionals and with its good communications is a perfect centre for us and our clients. Brighton, of course, remains an important office for us, particularly for working with our south coast clients.
As part of our expansion plans we appointed six new partners in 2007 and are proud to have attracted a number of leading individuals from firms such as Freshfields, Dechert LLP and Barlow Lyde Gilbert who bring corporate, banking, intellectual property, patent and construction expertise to further strength our core services. On 7 January we also welcomed Tony Sampson as a partner and he will lead our Insolvency & Turnaround practice .
Throughout the year we have worked on some exciting, complex and significant projects. Our Corporate and Real Estate deals tend to be in the £5- £50m range, but we also work on some larger deals and you can find more about several of them here.
During 2007 we started working with several new clients including SEEDA, Adecco UK Ltd, RDF Group Plc, Tesco Express and Anix Limited. Our priority with all our clients is to develop strong collaborative relationships and continuously add value. To help us get client service and the relationships with our clients absolutely right we actively seek feedback and in 2007 we commissioned independent research from leading professional services consultant Alan Hodgart. You should see positive changes throughout 2008 as a result of that research.
We enjoy working with all our clients and are there to advise and support you through good times and, if there any, through bad times as well. Everyone at DMH Stallard is looking forward to helping you achieve your goals in 2008. |
