Axiom to open Belfast base with £1.6m public cash injection
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Axiom has launched a new delivery centre in Belfast after being offered up to £1.6m in public funding to make the move.
The new office houses teams of lawyers and paralegals providing managed services to companies and general counsel, and could create around 102 jobs in the city by 2014.
Regional development agency Invest Northern Ireland, which has already given funding to Allen & Overy and Herbert Smith for their expansions into Belfast (4 February 2011), has offered Axiom up to £1.1m over eight years for the launch. Additionally, the Department of Employment and Learning has offered up to £500,000 for skills development under its Assured Skills programme.
According to Northern Ireland enterprise minister Arlene Foster, Axiom’s new delivery centre will “employ over 100 lawyers and paralegals and pay salaries significantly above the Northern Ireland private sector median, contributing almost £4m a year to the local economy”.
In a statement, Axiom co-founder and CEO Mark Harris, said: “In terms of industry norms, we’re building a very different type of operation in Belfast. Our centre here is exclusively focused on client-facing teams undertaking complex work. As a result, we searched for a location that offered a high-quality talent pool of experienced lawyers and ambitious law graduates.”
Axiom looked at cities like Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and Manchester, as well as Cape Town, before being swayed by Belfast’s talent pool.
Axiom has 11 offices across the US, UK and Asia, and employs around 800 professionals.
Readers' comments (6)
Anonymous | 20-Mar-2012 2:12 pm
.... and a talent pool that is not expensive
who in their right minds would want to become a lawyer these days?
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Anonymous | 20-Mar-2012 4:40 pm
hate to say it but this is the future. The profession is shrinking and more 'efficiencies' are on the way, that means outsourcing. Forget being a lawyer, perhaps it would be better to sign up as a paralegal and leave the headaches behind?
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Anonymous | 20-Mar-2012 4:47 pm
A good thing for the Belfast legal market at least, which has far more solicitors than there are jobs available at the moment. Let's just hope Axiom is looking for juniors as well as more experienced lawyers.
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IHateBPP | 20-Mar-2012 5:18 pm
"and a talent pool that is not expensive"
They're actually paying pretty well and a lot of people are leaving some of the better paid firms and banks in NI to move to Axiom.
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Surely an imposter, IHateBPP? | 21-Mar-2012 12:26 pm
You must be an imposter - no railing against the "sausage factories" this time?
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IHateBPP | 21-Mar-2012 3:25 pm
Not this time, I know a few people moving to Axiom and it seems to be a much better setup than the genuine sausage factories that have swung open their doors in NI recently.
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