A growing Midlands practice has announced its third acquisition in the space of a year – with plans to expand its new purchase and buy more firms.
Talbots Law has bought Worcester firm Scaiff LLP for an undisclosed amount and confirmed that all 16 staff will be retained. Plans are in place to recruit a further 10 solicitors and back-office staff over the next year, as well as ‘sympathetically’ refurbish the Grade II listed Scaiff offices.
Talbots already has offices in nearby Kidderminster and Bewdley and its new acquisition adds a first move into Worcester’s city centre.
Chief executive Dave Hodgetts said: ‘Scaiff LLP has been operating here for more than 30 years and has a proven track record of offering family, personal injury, wills and probate and residential conveyancing services to local people. All this expertise is being retained and will be supplemented by the additional capacity and infrastructure we can offer and access to business services and dispute resolution legal advice.’
Scaiff’s annual fees are currently £1.2m and this figure is expected to rise to £2m by the end of this year. The firm’s latest accounts, for the year ended 31 March 2023, show the business had £230,000 in cash reserves and total net assets of almost £380,000.
Scaiff LLP managing partner Simon Shaw, who will stay on after the deal, added: ‘Our existing clients will benefit from having access to a larger team and new legal specialisms that we haven’t been able to offer before. On the flip side, we are bringing considerable personal injury expertise to Talbots, which I know is an area it is keen to grow in.’
The deal means that Talbots has acquired three firms in the past 12 months, following Sarginsons in Coventry and Wright Solicitors in Dudley and Bewdley. This merger activity has resulted in annual revenues growing from £22m to £24m, with the firm targeting £30m by 2025. The firm is currently looking at more acquisitions in the West Midlands and said it will seek to move into the East Midlands in the longer term.
Talbots is one of the largest law firms to be an employee ownership trust. It converted the business in November 2021.
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