Sprecher Grier Halberstam

Turnover (£m): 10.4
RPL (£k): 242

As Sprecher Grier Halberstam stands on the brink of a potential merger with Birmingham’s Martineau, managing partner Emma Shipp is pleased to have come through a tough year with only a slight dent in Sprecher’s headline financials. The City firm’s turnover stood at £10.4m compared with £10.5m for 2009-10, while net profit slid slightly, from £3.8m to £3.6m. The profit margin was down from 37 to 35 per cent.

Litigation accounted for 34 per cent of the firm’s revenue, with strong practice areas in professional negligence, property repossession and other litigation for mortgage lenders.

Shipp said the firm has been relatively immune to the property slump because of its specialisation in pub companies, which has yielded a healthy slice of property litigation work.

Sprecher swapped its lockstep for a merit-based system in July, with work output and client wins being processed in a financial matrix and softer criteria assessed by the management board to set the new performance-based pay.