Clarke Willmott LLP

Clarke Willmott LLP is a law firm with a regional, sector-led approach across England and Wales. it invests time in developing relationships with clients and is known for its high level of service, straightforward manner and transparent fee solutions.

The firm: Recognising that clients prefer working with lawyers who understand the climate in which they operate and how their business actually works day-to-day, Clarke Willmott decided a number of years ago to adopt a sector-led approach.

The success of this strategy is evident by its reputation in a number of key industry areas. These include its 100-strong real estate and construction group, nationally renowned 60-strong social housing group, and specialist retail group. It also has leading teams advising on private client, commercial services, agriculture, renewable energy and sport.

Clarke Willmott works with an extensive client base of private sector businesses, sole traders, public sector bodies, high-net-worth individuals and charitable organisations, and they advise on almost every aspect of the law.

Clarke Willmott has seven regional offices and over 650 lawyers and support staff, including over 110 partners. The focus at Clarke Willmott is on steady, repeatable, year-on-year planned growth. It will continue to develop its teams in order to deliver services on a national basis.

Types of work undertaken: Clarke Willmott has expertise across a range of industry sectors and has market-leading teams in:

Agriculture: the agriculture and estates team provides a full complement of legal services (both contentious and non-contentious) to the agricultural and rural landowning communities nationally.

Banking and finance: advises clearing and private banks, building societies, specialist lenders and borrowers (both corporate and individual) on all aspects of lending transactions and related issues including recoveries, financial litigation and professional negligence claims.

Commercial services: advises companies of all sizes, from high-growth and entrepreneurial businesses to SMEs and larger corporates, on transactional and commercial work, contractual issues, employment services, procurement, restructuring and insolvency, litigation and debt collection.

Financial services: offers sector-focused expertise from a range of different practice areas, notably corporate and litigation. Clients include product providers, brokers, lenders and financial advisers, and businesses requiring authorisation for consumer credit activities.

Green energy: advice spans all aspects of green energy work including renewable and nuclear energy from inception of a project through to planning, acquisition, financing, construction, regulation, commissioning, grid connection and subsequent operation of plants and facilities.

Housebuilder: regarded as leading legal advisers to the residential development sector, acting for many of the UK’s largest volume housebuilders as well as for strategic land companies, smaller traditional builders and niche start-up ventures with particular expertise in all property aspects.

Intellectual property: acts for all types of businesses from new start-ups to household names in relation to the protection, enforcement and exploitation of their intellectual property rights.

Private client: particular experience in acting for professionals, high-net-worth individuals, family businesses and those with interests in the entertainment, sports and agricultural sectors. Provides advice on UK and international succession planning, trusts, tax and wealth protection as well as divorce and family law, , property issues, litigation, and personal injury and clinical negligence.

Real estate: this national team is one of the largest of its kind in the UK and has a deep sector knowledge advising across the full range of commercial property matters. Expertise covers construction and procurement, development, investment (including complex landlord and tenant, acquisition and disposal issues), regeneration, planning & environmental, property litigation, property finance, property tax, telecommunications and asset management.

Social housing: the national team of highly experienced, sector focused lawyers is one of the largest in the UK. The team acts for both national and regional registered providers, including most major frameworks, and provides specialist advice across a comprehensive range of legal areas.

Technology: services include drafting and negotiating large-scale ICT acquisitions, including appropriate service level agreements, ICT outsourcing, managed service provision, website design and development, Cloud service agreements, software as a service data protection issues and social media issues.