FIRM FOCUS:Beauchamps is a firm with an illustrious history, but building for the future in uncertain times is its primary focus today
In the early 1800s, an ambitious young Limerick lawyer by the name of Robert H Beauchamp moved to Dublin and set up a small practice on Baggot Street. As the city evolved over the years, so too did the firm, morphing into Beauchamp Orr and then the more cumbersome Hickey, Beauchamp, Kirwan O’Reilly, whilst weaving itself into the fabric of Dublin’s business life.
Now, two centuries on, the practice is known simply as Beauchamps (pronounced Beechams) Solicitors and is once again headed by an ambitious young lawyer with big plans – Dundalk man John White. Barely six months in the managing partner seat, White has already added a few more lines to the firm’s history. Just before Christmas, Beauchamps launched hbk, an outsourced claims handing service for insurers, led by partner John Savage. And in January it acquired Landwell Solicitors – the Irish arm of a global network of corporate law firms connected with PricewaterhouseCoopers – to beef up its capacity in corporate law and regulatory affairs.
“As the new managing partner of Beauchamps, I’m very ambitious for the firm,” says White, who worked his way up through the ranks after joining as a trainee in 1997. He says the slowdown in the economy has meant that opportunities for expansion have opened up, and he actively pursues people and prospects that could bring in new business and enhance the firms offering to clients. “Businesses like ours have to be courageous in taking the decision to grow,” he says. In addition to establishing hbk and buying Landwell, the firm hired 10 lawyers over the past 12 months, bringing its head count to about 120.
This expansion takes place against a backdrop of upheaval in a sector that had become heavily focused on property-related work. When the boom came to an abrupt end, conveyancing and spin-off work from commercial and residential property transactions evaporated, and law firms had little choice but to broaden their bases and shift resources to other areas.
“Not unlike other firms and businesses, in 2008, when major difficulties were experienced in the economy generally, a certain amount of restructuring had to be carried out , but since then the firm has been resilient,” White says. Beauchamps, which counts itself among the country’s top 10 legal firms by size, is now creating larger teams in practice areas which have seen a pick-up in activity, such as insolvency. “The reality of the situation is that every firm now in Dublin has a large part of their practice dedicated to insolvency and restructuring . . . it is unfortunately a major feature of business life in Dublin and Ireland at the moment,” he says.
The business has succeeded in forging a niche for itself in specialist areas such as sports law and certain subsets of insurance law. It is also seeing growth in areas like banking and enforcement, litigation, procurement and healthcare. However, just over a year ago, rival firm Eversheds poached five members of Beauchamps’s healthcare team including partner Aisling Gannon.
White could be forgiven for being touchy about this decampment, but he takes the higher ground and simply says Beauchamps has retained its very strong presence in healthcare.
One challenge presented by the recession is the downward pressure on legal fees, as cost-conscious clients baulk at boom-time rates. “All professional services firms are having to offer keener fee solutions,” he says. Some of the top-tier law firms have become more flexible in relation to their fee structures, which could potentially have a knock-on effect for mid-tier firms in terms of increased competition. However, White insists there has always been very healthy competition between larger firms, “so competition is not a new concept for us”.
“One of the benefits of the current situation is that some clients who historically would only have used the very large firms are now looking at some of the mid-tier firms for their legal solutions. So in addition to pressures, the current situation does present opportunities,” he says.
In addition to being squeezed on fees, legal firms have also had to contend with higher premiums for professional indemnity insurance which rose steeply in recent years due to increased claims against practices. However, White is upbeat about this too saying that, if anything, insurance rates have dropped this year. “We have a pretty strong, clean claims history . . . and the insurance environment is slightly easier than it was,” he says.
While Beauchamps has a private clients department, it remains first and foremost a business advisory firm. Its role is not just to give a “dry rendition of the law”, he says, but rather to provide clients with appropriate solutions, for instance helping them to understand how their businesses could be restructured. “Part of our brief is to instil confidence in clients in the business world, based on the best legal advice.”