173% turnover growth for Manchester’s Clear Law

North West law firm Clear Law has managed to more than double its turnover.

The Manchester-based company’s revenues hit £8.2m in 2015, representing a 173% increase against the previous year’s £3m.

Clear Law, which has traditionally focused on personal injury claims, attributed the growth to diversification efforts that allowed it to successfully handle large corporate lawsuits.

Sally Dunscombe, the director of law firm Annecto Legal LTD, has worked with Clear Law during the last eight years to offer guidance as the firm restructured to more effectively manage all aspects of its business.

According to Sally, new government legislation brought in three years ago drove a number of legal businesses to exit the personal injury market.

She explained: “A lot of firms have decided to move away from the lower value, high volume work and moved into larger claims or negligence arena.

“By contrast, Clear Law has taken the position of rebalancing the ratios of both, since personal injury work provides churn, as they enter the commercial sector.”

She continued: “They’ve got very ambitious plans to grow the workflow in the firm; one of the things we’re working on at the moment is with insurers, to derisk and fund some of those big misselling financial actions that they are taking forward.

“These are nonstandard insurance infractions.”

In 2011 Clear Law employed a team of 40, but since then the firm’s workforce has grown to 85.

To accommodate further growth, in September Clear Law purchased a new office in Manchester’s Timber Wharf development for £1.2m and invested an additional £500k to fit-out the space, with designs by interiors firms Ferrious and Chalkspace.

Clear Law’s managing partner, Matthew Corbett, commented: “The new workspace is bold and confident in its design, we are a forward thinking company and we think of ourselves as business people who happen to do law rather than traditional lawyers.

“We’ve invested heavily in IT with one eye on the future of legal services, using new working methods, robust systems and a pervasive use of IT.”

He added: “This allows us to dedicate our time to our clients whilst running their cases in an efficient and productive manner.”