Lupton Fawcett set for record growth and investment plan

Yorkshire law firm Lupton Fawcett is set to announce its highest ever turnover and profit as it prepares to embark on £1m plus investment programme.
Lutpon Fawcett's new managing partner Jonathan Oxley.Lutpon Fawcett's new managing partner Jonathan Oxley.
Lutpon Fawcett's new managing partner Jonathan Oxley.

Jonathan Oxley, who has taken over as managing partner with the firm, said he wanted Lupton Fawcett to become an even bigger player in the North’s legal sector and said he was optimistic about his chances.

Mr Oxley said his firm was currently investing more than £1m into its technology offering which he estimated would improve its efficiency by as much as 10 per cent.

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The law firm, which employs 250 people has offices in Leeds, Sheffield and York, is currently expanding or revamping the latter two and is in negotiations over the lease of its Leeds office.

The investment, Mr Oxley said were all about “the transition from a traditional firm to a modern firm”.

“I think under the previous management it was very much ran in a traditional way,” he said.

“I think we are very much perceived as being an established reputable and possibly not that exciting. And that is certainly something I want to change. The key elements of that are a physical space reworking, the way we work without people and the technology we run on.

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“Lupton Fawcett has always slightly hid its light under a bushel but we have some really great people here. One of the reasons my partners elected me as practice manager in April is that I do understand how to get the message out into the market and to our clients and get a real perception out there of what the business is capable of.

“We are remarkably well placed. I have inherited a positive bank balance and we are looking at funding the investments in our premises and in our ICT out of cash flow. We will not borrow to do that”

The firm is currently a full service practice, something Mr Oxley said he saw as an advantage.

“The way I look at that is that is a great spread.

“We can pretty much do anything for anybody and there’s a great resilience to it. If there is one thing that the financial crisis showed us what that the firms that were heavily skewed towards corporate work took a really big hit. Whereas if you have a diverse portfolio it gives you that balance. It probably means you don’t have totally stellar profitability all the time, the broader your range of offering the more likely you are to tend towards an average.”

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Mr Oxley added that he was very much bought into the agenda concerning the Northern Powerhouse and devolution of greater spending to the region.

“It is genuinely exciting to be a part of it and contributing it. We are a very regionally-faced business even though we have clients nationally.

“If the Industrial Strategy and devolution comes together I think Sheffield could be one of the major beneficiaries of that.

“I think it is very well placed. The advanced manufacturing is a bit of a flagship but there is a lot of potential elsewhere there. WE have this tremendous resource in the north and it seems blindingly obvious that giving it the investment could be enormously beneficial for the whole country.”

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He added that Leeds’s continued strength as a legal epicentre was something he expected to increase.

“The fact that new firms continue to come into Leeds is on one measure astonishing.

“But law firms are growing their businesses and pulling in work from further afield.

“That is not just northshoring, firms are winning clients from around the world.”