Northampton and Milton Keynes employment boutiques Floyd Graham & Co and Liddingtons merged recently, keeping the Floyd Graham name. As well as employment, the firm is also known for handling ­immigration, share schemes and corporate matters.

Floyd Graham

Floyd Graham

The niche firm now has six specialist employment lawyers. Managing partner Floyd Graham’s long-term strategy is to increase the market share of his new firm with the aim of becoming the market leader.

“We combined both firms and retained the ­specialism, becoming a bigger employment practice than before,” says Graham. “The lawyers from each firm were already dedicated in their own right, and the coming together has expanded their resources.”

The merger has enabled the firm to deal with its larger client base more effectively, Graham argues.

“Our client base has been growing rapidly over the last 12 months, which drove the need to increase the resources to deal with that,” he says. “This was achieved through the merger faster than trying to recruit individually. Over the next 12 months our focus is to become the employment firm of choice locally.”

Graham believes it is his firm’s “unique dedicated HR function” that makes it stand out. It has project teams of solicitors alongside HR professionals, which enables it to offer what it calls a “bespoke one-stop service”. “There’s a significant cost reduction to the end user in doing this,” adds Graham.

The recession has had obvious implications for the amount of employment-related work available.

“The economic climate means there’s a reduction in employment, and with that goes an increased need for litigation,” says Graham. “Also, many of our ­corporate clients are refining their operational ­infrastructures to avoid job losses. It’s not always appropriate to reduce headcount, as in doing so they lose leading key skills which are difficult to replace.”

Either way, the advice of a good employment lawyer is likely to come in handy.