Restructured Shoosmiths see surges in complex deals with eyes set on 2030

Law firm Shoosmiths has sharpened its structure over the last couple of years, resulting in the firm being one of Europe’s busiest corporate law firm.

In the first five months into this year, Shoosmiths, advised on over $5bn worth of deals, making it “the most active corporate law firm in the UK and Europe,” says CEO David Jackson.

Jackson told City AM, as part of Eyes on the Law, that the firm is getting “increasingly more active in getting instructed on higher value, more complex international private equity deals.”

This “is precisely the sweet spot where we want to be operating,” he added.

Some examples of this include the firm advising Hipgnosis Songs Fund earlier this year, on its latest takeover bid from US private equity investor Blackstone.

While its corporate team advised global construction chemicals company FOSROC on its conditional sale to Saint-Gobain for approximately $1.25bn in July.

Kirsten Hewson, chair of Shoosmiths, detailed that over the last two years the firm has been doing a lot of work internally to “get ourselves structured properly” in order to reach the “objectives for 2030”.

“Our strategy was deliberately set on a longer term than some other law firms, to give us time to build what we were doing,” she noted.

The firm has recently built its teams “with much more clarity”, as Hewson noted that previously the corporate lawyers did a bit of everything but “over the last couple of years, we’ve really honed them” into focus.

Her example was the new private equity house team. The lawyers were honed to focus on “higher level private equity work, which they’ve started to do”.

The firm has also pumped funding into its business development team, as Hewson stated “which is giving us a completely different focus on the outside, in.”

Shoosmiths has a three-pillar strategy focusing on corporate, real estate, and litigation, with a five-sector approach including technology, financial services, energy, infrastructure, and mobility.

Jackson noted that the Labour government’s “five missions aligned perfectly with our five sectors, so clearly we have called that right.”

Similar to deals, he also highlighted the firm was to be advising on “big ticket, really complex, high stakes litigation”, adding “that’s what our litigation practice is focused on”.

“You won’t find us doing the kind of mundane, relatively low value commercial litigation. We are investing much more in specialist litigation teams, focused on the sector areas where we can bring genuine value to our clients,” he added.

The firm has appeared on some notable litigation cases this year, including representing Craig Wright, the man who was deemed to be a liar by the English High Court.

In the ‘bitcoin case’, a first for the court, a judge had to determine if Wright really was the man behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the name for the author of the Bitcoin White Paper.

In a (unique) quick ruling in March, followed by a full judgment in July, the judge not only found Craig not the creator of Bitcoin, but in fact a liar. He also referred him to the CPS for lies and forging documents throughout the eye-grabbing trial.

Another case, currently ongoing at trial, the firm has a team of the most anticipated court cases in recent years, the Russian aviation litigation.

The strategy is seemingly working for the firm so far. In July the firm revealed it surpassed £200m in revenue for the first time, up 6 per cent on the previous year of £194.1m.

Its profits rose by 5 per cent to £66m, up from £62.7m. While its equity partners took home over £780,000 pounds in profit (PEP).

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