The Legal 500

The firm: Foot Anstey is a premier regional law firm with a reputation for attracting the best talent. It was recently awarded the accolade of Regional Law Firm of the Year at the British Legal Awards. The firm provides specialist legal advice to a discerning client base comprised of businesses, public sector organisations and individuals and has a growing reputation for winning prestigious national clients and for providing commercial advice. The firm continues to invest in its people and technology and is committed to improving its significant service offering in order to provide clients with value for money and high quality advice. With strength across its core practice areas; corporate and commercial, dispute resolution, employment and real estate, the firm has an enviable reputation with several lawyers ranked amongst the best in the UK.

The firm has grown rapidly in recent years and has significantly strengthened the offering with the opening of a Bristol Office. Foot Anstey has a reputation for being easy to do business with and provides a collaborative working environment and an infrastructure to match the leading firms. The firm’s investment in talent acquisition has seen Foot Anstey recruit 14 new partners from national and international firms in the past 18 months. These new partners are able to combine the quality of life offered by the south west with high quality work that emanates from an impressive client portfolio. Foot Anstey is committed to growing in a responsible manner, minimising any impact on the environment and strengthening relationships with local communities.

Types of work undertaken: Corporate: the firm’s corporate team, recently ranked No.1 in the regional deals review, provides a full service to corporate and business clients. In addition to corporate transactional advice, clients are offered specialists to support their business needs, advising on areas such as financial services, pensions, competition, share schemes, corporation tax and AIM issues. Clients include Halfords, Silvergate UBM, 90 North, Santander and Phoenix Equity Partners.

Commercial: the commercial team are trusted experts to private, public and third sector organisations, advising on every aspect of a business’s supply chain, or process, from research and development through to the post sales environment including commercial contracts, complex projects and disputes, competition and procurement law, financial services and consumer credit, intellectual property, privacy and data protection, IT and telecommunications, outsourcing and commercial collaborations.

Dispute resolution: the rapidly growing dispute resolution team looks after a wide range of commercial disputes with highly specialist teams offering advice in a number of niche areas. Clients include Armada Finance, Bank of Ireland, Hitachi Capital (UK), Lloyds TSB Bank, the NFU and the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Employment: the firm’s employment law team offering is the largest in the south west, working with major national and regional employers such as Odeon Cinemas, Eden Project, Screwfix, The Royal Shakespeare Company and Stagecoach South West.

Real estate: the property team supports a large portfolio of public sector and private clients handling prestigious City work alongside large regional and local projects. The team is supported by dedicated planning, property litigation and construction specialists.

Clinical negligence: the highly rated clinical negligence team has over 25 specialists with vast experience in handling high value and complex cases. Work comes from private individuals and key relationships such as with Scope, Sands (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society), Meningitis Trust and local Headway Groups.

Wealth and succession: the firm also has a strong wealth and succession team advising on a range of work from tax planning, wealth and succession management and family law.

Foot Anstey has a number of dedicated specialists with significant sector experience. The firm’s sector focus spans the following areas: agriculture; aerospace, defence & security; charities and social enterprise; education; energy & infrastructure; financial services; healthcare; media; retail & leisure; transport & logistics.

Other offices: Bristol, Exeter, Taunton, Truro

Number of UK Partners 57

Number of other UK fee-earners 150