Law firm Birketts expands global reach using London as launchpad

Law firm Birketts has revamped its brand beyond East Anglia, using its London move as a springboard to go global.

Birketts, one of the UK’s oldest law firms, moved into London four years ago.

Experienced partner Mark Pinder was headhunted just in time for the launch of the City office via a merger with boutique insurance firm EC3 Legal.

Pinder told City AM, as part of Eyes on the Law, “If you’re in London, you can then springboard anywhere in the world.”

He joined the firm after 12 years at Bird & Bird, where he led the launch of its Middle East operations in the United Arab Emirates.

Before that, he worked at Sidley Austin, Travers Smith, and Slaughter and May.

Pinder noted that he didn’t know Birketts when he was first approached. However, he added, “One of the things that stood out for me is that the firm is managed by a professional CEO and not a lawyer.”

“It’s a big, complicated business, so you want trained managers to run it, and generally, lawyers are not as good because it’s not our training,” he explained.

The firm’s chief executive is Jonathan Agar, a former director at Deutsche Bank and an investment manager at Fidelity International.

The firm opened its office in London in 2020 with 15 people from EC3 Legal, and now it has expanded to 85 lawyers.

“We could have grown quicker as there has been a huge demand for people to join us, but we’re trying to keep it sensible,” Pinder added.

Birketts not trying to be ‘big, bold and brash’

Birketts has tried to stand out in the crowded Lonon legal market by keeping its rates lower than the market average.

“We are basically operating the same financial model here as we do outside London, so that means we’re incredibly cost effective,” he noted.

The firm has not done “what many other non-London-based firms have done,” which is open an office, recruit locally, make it big, charge London rates, and “try and pretend to be another London competitor.”

“We’re not trying to be that,” he stated, adding that “all our infrastructure is outside London”, which sees a large number of business costs based on East Anglia rates.

While sitting on the firm’s board, repping London, Pinder is also developing the firm’s international practice, using the City office as the ‘springboard’.

He stated that the firm is looking at certain sectors it operate in but added it’ll be narrowly focused, ‘because you can’t spread yourself too wide’, His example was its technology group, so the West Coast of US ‘is of great interest’ for the group as its a huge marketplace.

Pinder noted that changing brand recognition is not something that happens overnight.

“It is a really interesting development for the firm and I think it’s helping establish the name as being something more than an East of England regional law firm, which I think four years ago was how it was seen,” he added.

Eyes on the Law is a weekly column focused on the legal sector.