Veale Wasbrough Vizards

It was an all-but static year in 2011–12 for Veale Wasborough Vizards, with overall turnover slipping slightly from £21.4m to £21.3m.

The driving force behind revenue last year was again an increased workload for the education team which handles a range of work on behalf of academies, state schools and universities.

An uptick in corporate transactional work helped maintain turnover, said managing partner Simon Heald. The corporate team contributed 26 per cent of turnover, up from just 9 per cent the previous year.

Veale Wasborough Vizards has made a number of lateral hires, including hiring former Henry Hughes & Hughes senior partner and property specialist Mark Hughes to join the London office. The Bristol office gained commercial litigator Ed Husband from Bevan Brittan and education employment partner Alice Reeve from Rickerbys.

The firm also hired Bristol City Council legal head Stephen McNamara as a consultant in the firm’s public sector department and rehired former partner Sue Malthouse, who returned to the firm in November 2012 after 18 months as group director of legal and company secretary at Clarks Shoes.

In July 2012 the firm announced it was in merger discussions with Hewitsons which has offices in Cambridge, Northampton and Milton Keynes. However the two firms failed to come to agreement and the talks were called off in January 2013.