
James Hunt is a solicitor, serial entrepreneur and founder of Everyman Legal – a new type of law firm providing legal services for entrepreneurs. The company of solicitors is the first in the UK to announce it will take advantage of the new practising regime created under the Legal Services Act by seeking a stock market admission. The company intends to trade its shares on Sharemark – a stock market for smaller companies – in the last quarter of 2012. In an honest and open account for Real Business, James Hunt will be charting the ups and downs of preparing his company for an admission.
This week we have started working with a strategic marketing consultant, Barnaby Wynter of The Brand Bucket Marketing Company. I’ve had a couple of meetings with him in London and now he wants to meet my three colleagues. That makes three solicitors and an accountant: perhaps the marketer’s biggest challenge (or worst nightmare)! During the boom years, there was significant growth in the legal services sector. However, with the bust has come a significant over-supply of solicitors. The biggest law firms cut early and cut deep. It is the mid-tier law firms |(those with ten to 50 partners) that face the most daunting challenge. Undifferentiated, with high fixed costs and desperate to win business, they are often pitching for work at well below cost just to sustain their teams.Share this story