Taylor Walton LLP

This highly respected regional firm is the trusted advisor to a diverse range of clients including FTSE 350 companies, public and private sector organisations, charities and high-net worth individuals.

The firm: The firm has a reputation for developing and investing in home-grown talent, with an exceptionally high staff retention rate and an average length of service unrivalled within the region. This approach brings with it many inherent benefits for its clients, including a continuity and depth of knowledge and expertise that is hard to replicate.

A client-centred approach to legal support has resulted in steady organic growth in recent years. The firm boasts a number of longstanding clients and referrers for whom Taylor Walton is the first choice for a range of needs, from everyday business support to untangling the most impenetrable legal issues. Working in partnership with a number of other trusted advisors such as surveyors, accountants and HR consultants, the firm seeks to provide a fully rounded, commercially focused service to its clients.

Types of work undertaken: Taylor Walton provides all the services listed here from its offices in Luton, Harpenden and St Albans to an increasingly national client base.

Real estate: The strength and depth of the team offers clients real specialisms in key areas, including in landlord and tenant work. They have seen a growing focus on work in the retail sector, with an increasingly national client base. Areas of support include development work, including site assembly, overage arrangements and extensive security lending experience in acting for lenders offering mezzanine finance in connection with commercial and residential development sites.

Commercial litigation: The team provides a level of technical expertise and quality of work unrivalled within the region including leading edge work on construction disputes, contentious probate, professional negligence and property litigation. It provides a pragmatic, proactive and effective approach to dispute resolution work, including upfront information about costs, merits/chances of success, taking a creative approach to resolving disputes other than by traditional litigation.

Corporate and commercial: Taylor Walton acts for an outstanding range of well-known and high-quality clients within the region. It regularly handles matters of a size and complexity unrivalled by others, acting for the likes of NatWest, Santander and Bank of Ireland within the banking sector, and undertaking a range of substantial acquisitions and disposals in the last year. The team offers a growing international transactions practice across multiple jurisdictions, most notably in the US, and niche skills in the areas of recovery acquisitions and accountancy practice sales and acquisitions.

Employment: The employment team has developed long-standing and highly valued relationships with its clients based on understanding its clients’ business needs and objectives. The team takes a preventative approach to employment issues ranging from dealing with day to day employment law queries including advising on disciplinary and grievance matters to outsourcing and TUPE work, incentivisation plans through to advising on discrimination issues as well as providing corporate support. The team also advises and represents clients on a full range of contentious matters, including tribunal work and dispute resolution for employers and employees.

Family: The family team is renowned renowned for taking a pragmatic approach to matters where client expectations are carefully managed from the outset to ensure achievable outcomes are attained. The team offers alternative approaches to litigation through arbitration, or the collaborative law process which enables parties to negotiate their terms of settlement round the table, avoiding costly and contentious litigation. Work includes divorce, dividing matrimonial finances, family trusts, complex disputes relating to contact and residence issues in respect of children, prenuptial agreements and cohabitee disputes relating to both children and property.

Private client: The Taylor Walton private client team is the team of choice for many clients and referrers both locally, and increasingly, from the City of London. The team takes a pragmatic approach to complex issues, working with many high-net-worth clients (including business owners and landed families), often across generations and increasingly across jurisdictions, to resolve current matters while proactively identifying areas of future support. All partners within the department have a substantial personal following and some are members of The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP).