Member Article

Income hits £35m in ‘record year’ for Ward Hadaway

Newcastle law practice Ward Hadaway has announced a 7% growth across its business in what it describes as a ‘record year’.

The firm, which employs 450 staff at offices in Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester, saw annual income jump by 7.2% to £35.8m for the year ending April 2016.

Its North East office in particular saw growth across its Commercial, Property and Corporate departments driven by some big deals in the region, including a management buy out at The Pen Shop and PD Ports’ acquisition of an inland port complex.

The growth was matched by gains across its three regional offices with fee income growing across all five departments in the past year, the firm said, matched by a 32% rise in its like-for-like profit margin and an 80% reduction in net debt.

Ward Hadaway Managing Partner, Jamie Martin, commented: “These are exceptionally good results for the firm, especially taking into consideration the fact that competition in the legal marketplace has arguably never been greater.

“Apart from excellent headline figures, what is most pleasing about these results is the fact that we are seeing growth right across the board and in all three of our office locations.”

The figures mean Ward Hadaway outperformed the average growth achieved by Deloitte’s Top 100 UK Law Firms last year, something which Jamie attributes to the firm’s commitment to the Northern Powerhouse vision.

He added: “We are proud to be a Northern based law firm for National Business and we have long believed that the key to our continued growth lies in our ability to operate across the North in line with the Government’s Northern Powerhouse Initiative and provide high quality legal support to companies, individuals and organisations across the country.

“I believe these latest results demonstrate the success of this approach and are a real tribute to the hard work, dedication and expertise of our people and the vision, determination and ambition of our clients.

“We will continue to invest in developing and recruiting talented, hard-working lawyers as we look to build further on our well-established track record of sustained success, which has now seen the firm grow by over 25% in the last five years alone.”