Opportunities Liverpool
“If you haven’t been here for a while, you won’t recognise the place” is the common refrain of those extolling the regeneration of Liverpool as a cultural and economic centre.
This process has been going on since long before the city was awarded the European Capital of Culture crown for 2008. The award is not, say the city’s lawyers, the beginning of the regeneration of Liverpool but rather a validation of what has already been achieved since the dark years of the 1980s, which saw large-scale dock strikes, economic decline, local government militancy and depopulation.
Liverpool was awarded Objective One funding status by the European Union in 1994, which has been put to work to regenerate the infrastructure, economic base and, above all, the environment on Merseyside to help the city recover the commercial vitality it lost through the decline of its port during the 1970s and ‘80s. Since then, the city has enjoyed a distinct reversal of its fortunes, crowned in 2003 by the award of the European Capital of Culture, which has nevertheless set off a frenzy of new investment and development in preparation for its year in the sun in 2008.
The North West Development Agency, expects that the city of culture award will bring in 1.7m extra visitors, create 12,000 jobs and attract £2 billion in extra investment. The city council reports that the number of companies enquiring about relocating to the region increased from 44 to 60 in the year after the award was announced.
So what is the effect on the city’s legal sector?
The market has traditionally been divided in two – a tier of leading commercial firms, including Brabners Chaffe Street, DLA Piper and DWF and a gaggle of leading insurance practices such as Berrymans Lace Mawer, Hill Dickinson and Weightmans.
This distinction has blurred in recent years, however, as the insurance firms have diversified into commercial disciplines (to varying degrees of success) and all have expanded into the Manchester market in a bid to tap into its deeper pool of corporate and commercial clients. However, the law firms certainly expect to benefit from the influx of investment accompanying the Capital of Culture award and remain hopeful that the corporate and commercial opportunities will begin to grow quickly and remain permanently closer to home.
Manchester enjoyed some success in persuading companies to relocate there thanks to the positive profile it gained from hosting the Commonwelth Games in 2002. Hill Dickinson’s senior partner Tony Wilson hopes that Liverpool will enjoy the same benefits from the Capital of Culture. “A redress in the market balance between Liverpool and Manchester is on the way,” he says. “There’s a great deal of interest and activity in Liverpool.”
The immediate effect on the recruitment market has been to dramatically increase the demand for property, non-contentious construction, planning, projects and banking lawyers to assist with the construction boom, but local lawyers predict that growth in corporate work will follow. Lawyers with public sector and/or PFI experience will also find some good legal opportunities and although corporate plc work is generally at a premium in Liverpool firms, the investment going into the city means that the law firms’ work is improving in terms of quality as well as quantity. The salary gap between Liverpool and Manchester has narrowed as well, to little more than a couple of thousand pounds at the larger firms.
Insurance litigation, a specialism that the city originally developed thanks to its maritime heritage, is also a steady source of legal recruitment in the larger firms as is claimant personal injury work in some of the smaller practices. The emphasis of much of the city’s redevelopment is on the leisure, retail and creative industries, which also creates demand for licensing, employment and IP lawyers.
Yet for all the improvements to the city’s environment, infrastructure and legal sector, recruiters say that it is still difficult to persuade many people to move to Liverpool, even from nearby Manchester. “It’s still not easy to get people to commute in that direction, even when the prospects are better, although Liverpool lawyers will happily go the other way,” says a Manchester-based recruiter. “They probably have more success with recruiting southern-based lawyers than they do from Manchester.”
The suspicion it seems is mutual and lawyers from outside will often find that they need a genuine reasons for moving to the region if they are to persuade potential employers that they won’t be straight off back to London or Manchester as soon as the opportunity turns up.
Nevertheless, the firms themselves say that the city’s renaissance means that they are finding it easier to attract people to work in the city and that they are increasingly interested in attracting lawyers from other parts of the country, especially London.
“It has always been more difficult to recruit in Liverpool than Manchester, but of late we have recruited 7 or 8 property lawyers into Liverpool and we increasingly come across people who want to move to Liverpool purely because of the opportunities here,” says Michael Brabner, managing partner of Brabners Chaffe Street.
So what have they got to offer?
The nature of the leisure and creative industries they are increasingly serving means that legal practice on Merseyside can be a more informal affair than elsewhere and the economic adversity suffered by the city in recent years means that the atmosphere in the legal sector is perhaps more collegiate than in other cities. Local law firms also stress that lawyers in Liverpool are more committed to getting deals done than scoring points off each other in negotiations.
One local managing partner describes the professional scene as a “bit of a village” and those who enjoy networking will thrive on Merseyside. “After a few years in the doldrums, Liverpool is the land of opportunity now,” says David Lewis, head of the insurance practice at Weightmans. The legal community reflects that excitement.
“Historically, it has been harder to recruit people into Liverpool than Manchester, but that trend is changing now. I have no hesitation in saying that once people come here, they will stay.”
Links
www.visitliverpool.com
icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk
www.Merseyguide.co.uk
www.merseysidetoday.co.uk
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