The Legal 500

Hartwig is a firm of solicitors and notaries offering a full range of contentious, commercial, property and private client work in England and Wales, and in Germany. It is London’s largest firm of solicitor-notaries, with a wide range of commercial and private clients.

The firm: Licensed in New York since 1976 and in Germany since 1978, this small firm has earned the respect and affection of many long-standing clients for its unique understanding of manufacturing industry, international trade and finance. It has an outstanding professional reputation for discretion, efficiency and its strong commercial negotiating skills.

Associates with the firm originally qualified academically or professionally as lawyers in Germany, France and Hungary. The firm writes numerous foreign law opinions each year in the appropriate format for clients and courts in the UK and abroad, covering corporate acquisitions and reconstruction, financings, leases and other property transactions, probate and tax, as well as litigation. It knows and works with a wide range of regional and specialist counsel.

Hans Hartwig, past editor of a volume on English securities documentation at Mainz University Centre for Banking Law, joint author of Administrative Receivership (Sweet & Maxwell), and a contributor to English and German professional journals, practises mainly business and corporate law, with recognised expertise in turnkey, joint venture and know-how agreements and European law, but also has qualifications in tax, trusts and estates law and is a chartered European tax adviser. Manfred Kuhn is a contributing editor to European Current Law and specialises in UK-German litigation, intellectual property and companies. Janet Aspden conducts industrial and commercial, employment, property and international litigation.

The firm has a strong reputation in commercial litigation and dispute resolution, including cross-border insolvency, antitrust, distributorship, agency and employment matters.

Lawyers formerly employed by or for many years associated with the firm, now working independently in Europe and the Americas, offer continuing legal, language and local knowledge support. Areas of commercial expertise as past in-house lawyers or from other specialist experience include insurance, banking and financial services, engineering, construction, aircraft, motor vehicles, food, pharmaceuticals, clothing and publishing industries.

Types of work undertaken: Since the Courts and Legal Services Act opened the market at the end of 1999, the notarial practice has, in association with London’s Notary Chambers and European notaries, provided innovative, cost-effective cross-border corporate, property and personal documentation and litigation support. Much of the firm’s advisory work is on a counsel basis for other lawyers and corporate legal departments, often on a regular basis, at rates which allow the instructing lawyer a sensible margin. The firm is accustomed to US-style negotiated fee arrangements, and offers resource sharing and secondment arrangements in major litigation. The firm’s multinational structure often enables it to recover the entire cost in successful German proceedings.

This is an unpretentious, attractive, very competent firm of English and international business lawyers, and unlike many of the international firms, it also conducts a well-regarded private client practice with sensitivity and care in personal matters.

Associated offices: London, Croydon, New York, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Saarbrücken