Ward Hadaway aims to achieve turnover of £75m by 2029 as it grows in Yorkshire

He added: "We want to grow all three offices with a particular focus on Leeds and Manchester to increase turnover."

Ward Hadaway, which was founded in 1988, launched its Leeds office in 2008 and now has 120 staff based there. Mr Petrie, who joined Ward Hadaway in January 2011 and has more than 27 years’ legal experience, said: “The firm is approaching £50m turnover this year and we would like to increase that turnover to £75m by 2029 across the firm and to achieve turnover of more than £100m by 2034.

He added: “We’ve grown at a rate of between seven to nine per cent year on year during Covid, and we believe we can continue to grow at a rate of about 10 per cent per year going forward.

"We hope to do this through organic growth, lateral hires and merger partners, and so we are looking for the brightest and best lawyers out there who might want to join our existing talent pool at Ward Hadaway.

"We’re very good at retaining people,’’ he said. “A lot of our partners trained with the firm and have been with us for many years and are now senior partners within the business.

"We have got an appetite for mergers as well. We are keen to remain independent because our people and our culture are very important to us.

"And it’s not a case of chasing turnover; anyone we bring into the firm have to be like-minded people who fit with our culture and share the same values. We are looking for an ideal partner in the £5m to £15m turnover bracket who will complement what we’ve got or provide talent in areas we need to strengthen.”

Mr Petrie said the firm, which has 80 staff in Manchester and 300 in Newcastle, regarded itself as a large family business.

He added: “People here are really important. We continued to grow, particularly in Leeds, during the Covid period. When lots of other firms were making redundancies, we were recruiting heavily.”

He said the disputes, employment, property and corporate teams had been particular areas of growth in recent years.

“Service is at the forefront of everything we do,’’ Mr Petrie said. “From our perspective, we would love nothing more than to have a Leeds or Manchester office that was the size of the Newcastle office if not bigger. The potential is huge in both Leeds and Manchester.

“While there may be some difficult economic times ahead, I believe we are big enough to cope with whatever comes our way.”

In 2011, Ward Hadaway launched the Yorkshire Fastest 50 awards, with support from The Yorkshire Post, to celebrate the region’s most dynamic enterprises.

The awards have attracted a number of heavyweight political figures as keynote speakers including Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Balls. Sir Keir, who is now the leader of the Labour Party, was Shadow Brexit Secretary when he appeared at the 2018 awards ceremony.