London firm goes into administration in its 150th year

A north London firm which had just reached its 150^th anniversary has gone into administration and ceased trading.

Hodders Law Limited was placed into administration last Friday and financial advisory firm Quantuma placed in charge of its affairs.

According to its most recent accounts, the firm had 48 staff members working from four offices. Neighbouring firm JPC announced this week that it had reached an agreement with Hodders and Quantuma to buy its private client, real estate and dispute resolution cases.

JPC said six lawyers from Hodders will join the firm: James Tompkins, Simon Cook and Dylane Dawkins from the dispute resolution team, Sharlene Reid from the private client team and Stephen Rehder and Carol Reimann from residential real estate.

Yashmin Mistry, JPC’s managing partner, said: ‘In a market-place where there has been a significant reduction in small to medium size firms providing high quality commercial services, we are really excited by the expansion to our team of lawyers.

‘The lawyers from Hodders have a fantastic reputation for carrying out quality work and “punching above their weight”. With Hodders’ strengths in private client and dispute resolution we have the opportunity to broaden the legal services we currently offer our high net-worth clients.’

In a statement on its website, Hodders said that all client files will transfer to another regulated law firm, with clients being contacted now to update them on the situation.

The firm told clients: ‘Your new law firm will also be in direct contact with you, by phone, email or text message as you prefer, so as to take your full instructions.’

The most recent annual report and statement of accounts, for the period ending 31 July, stated that Hodders had assets worth £1.64m, of which around half was from debtors due to pay within a year.

But the amount owed to creditors within one year had increased from £970,000 to more than £2m. The firm went from having net current assets of £111,000 to an overall deficit of almost £400,000.

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