Scottish law firm Harper Macleod has marked its 30th year in business by announcing record profitability in its most recent financial year – its seventh consecutive year of profit growth.
The firm saw profits pass the £10 million mark for the first time ever, with a 4.2% rise to £10.2m on turnover of £26.5m.
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Chief Executive Martin Darroch said: “These results show our commitment to a strategy of sanity, not vanity. We constantly work to improve the efficiency and productivity of our business and have quietly reshaped our model over the past few years without compromising our bottom line. After making a number of acquisitions to further our strategic aims, we said the past few years would be a period of consolidation and I’m delighted to say that has been carried out successfully.
“We know that we can provide clients in all sectors with a combination of quality of service and cost that sets us apart from much of our competition, including many of the new brands who have entered our market. To be frank, we can deliver the very best legal advice without charging the exorbitant fees that are often associated with ‘prestige’ law firms.”
“We have shown growth in all our main areas of activity over the past few years, with the exception of insurance sector where after analysing the direction of the UK-wide market we made a strategic decision to lower the proportion of our business that accounts for. It is this type of pro-active planning which has allowed us to thrive.”
Since the firm acquired smaller firms Bird Semple (Glasgow, 2014), DSR (Lerwick, 2015) and Allen & Shaw (Inverness, 2016), the value of Harper Macleod’s private client and residential property practice has more than doubled and private individuals have become its largest client group.
At the same time it has registered growth in all other key sectors including Public Sector, Energy & Natural Resources, Real Estate & Construction, Banking & Finance and Food & Drink.
Within the public sector, the firm’s social housing practice is a market leader, among other activity advising clients on funding deals worth more than £200 million in the past few weeks alone, while the renewable energy practice has completed deals worth more than £300m in 2018 alone.
The firm’s Banking & Finance team increased its level of panel appointments and the scale of transactions it carries out with several of the UKs leading banks.
It is also regarded as a leading adviser in the entrepreneurial arena, supporting initiatives including Scottish EDGE and partnering with organisations such as Crowdcube, the UK’s leading equity crowdfunding platform.
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