Blake Morgan teams celebrate success in legal directories (2019)

Blake Morgan’s teams and leading individuals have been recognised for the strength and depth of their expertise in the 2020 edition of the prestigious Legal 500 directory and the Chambers & Partners 2020 UK guide.

Both directories review and recognise the strengths of law firms and their lawyers across the UK and recommends them based on feedback from clients and peers.

In this year’s Legal 500, the firm received 72 rankings and saw 37 practice areas ranked as ‘Tier 1’ – denoting those areas considered best-in-class.  This included the firm’s Corporate and Commercial, Banking and Finance, Employment and Pensions, Family Law, Public Sector, Real Estate and Construction practices.  Blake Morgan also secured Tier 1 ranks for Intellectual Property, Corporate Tax, IT and Telecoms.

The Blake Morgan Injury Group also had reason to celebrate with two Tier 1 rankings for Clinical Negligence and Personal Injury.

The directory also recognised the specialist expertise of the firm’s legal advisors with 75 ranked lawyers in this year’s edition. 37 lawyers received the ‘Leading Individuals’ accolade in recognition of their commercial approach to finding legal solutions to their client’s business challenges. Among those listed were Kath Shimmin who heads up the firm’s Banking & Finance division and is recognised by the directory as being “a very commercial and responsive partner”. Eve Piffaretti who is head of office in Cardiff and leads the firm’s Public Sector team in Wales and “has a real depth of extensive on behalf of public sector entities” and Robert Cherry, Head of Corporate, who is recognised for his “strong ties in the market for a varied mix of corporate, private equity sponsors and SME’s”.  In addition, 25 lawyers were named ‘Rising Stars’ and 13 were recognised as ‘Next Generation Lawyers’.

Blake Morgan also performed strongly in the Chambers and Partners 2020 UK guide. This year, the guide ranked 41 of Blake Morgan’s practice areas as either Band 1 or 2.  Practice areas that achieved Band 1 in England include: Employment, Clinical Negligence, Planning, Pensions, Professional Negligence and Intellectual Property.  In Wales the top Band was awarded to Administrative and Public Law, Construction, Employment, Real Estate, Restructuring / Insolvency, Social Housing, Litigation and Real Estate Litigation.

This year, Partner and Head of Court of Protection and Blake Morgan Injury Group, Alison McClure, was named as an ‘eminent practitioner’ – a ranking awarded to highly influential practitioners who are key players in the team but have reduced fee-earning work.   Philip Jardine, Partner and Head of Built Environment in Wales, Thames Valley and London is also recognised in this way.  Legal Director and insolvency expert Lucy Edwards and Legal Director Patricia Wakeford from Blake Morgan Injury Group were also both hailed as ‘star associates’ within the firm.  Overall, 22 lawyers were listed as Band 1 individuals and a further 8 were earmarked as ‘associates to watch’.

Bruce Potter, Chairman at Blake Morgan, said: “We are extremely proud to have performed better than last year in both the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners 2020 UK guides this year.  Furthermore, as well as wide-ranging regional recognition in this latest Chambers and Partners 2020 guide, a total of nine Blake Morgan lawyers have been singled out as national leaders in their field.   This is testament to the dedication and commitment of our legal teams to finding relevant and commercially realistic legal solutions to benefit our clients and their businesses both now and in the future.

“It has also been another successful year for our private client teams who help our clients navigate sensitive and complex family, tax and probate issues. These rankings come directly from clients and peers and I would like to thank our partners and people for delivering an outstanding service to them.”