The Legal 500

Semple Fraser is a commercial law firm offering advice of the highest quality throughout the UK across a range of areas. The firm’s success has been built on the simple principle of sticking to what it does best. With offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester, it concentrates solely on providing specialist advice in the key areas of most importance to its clients.

The firm: To quote managing partner Alister Fraser: ‘Our aim is to be the best at what we do in the specialist areas of commercial law of most importance to the needs of our clients’. This philosophy has seen Semple Fraser grow rapidly since its inception in 1990 and this success is reflected in a client list featuring many of the UK’s leading names in their respective fields.

The firm prides itself on its record for keeping clients and constantly looking for innovative new ways to ensure the highest levels of client service. An example of this is its unique Clarisys system of digital filing, giving Semple Fraser clients with a number of projects on the go direct access to real-time information on the status of any job, including fees to date.

The firm’s long established reputation as commercial property specialists is further reflected in the development of its own electronic transaction management system, the first custom-designed lawyers’ system in the UK to be certified compliant with the latest 1.61 version of PISCES (Property Information Systems Common Exchange Standard).

Types of work undertaken: Describing itself as ambitious, progressive and energetic, the growth and success of Semple Fraser has attracted leading specialist lawyers to the firm, ensuring the highest quality of expert advice in its core disciplines of commercial property, banking and finance, corporate, construction, corporate recovery and insolvency, employment, environment and pollution, litigation, planning, IT/IP and all aspects of tax.

Having in-depth expertise in these areas enables Semple Fraser to offer advice on the largest and most complex deals on a bi-jurisdictional basis. The firm sees itself not only as lawyers but as strategic partners in helping clients achieve their overall business objectives. This is evidenced by the emphasis the firm places on team working, guaranteeing the automatic involvement of all relevant departments on any size of project, as and when required, ensuring all clients obtain the best advice whatever the nature of the transaction.

This also manifests itself in the firm’s strategic focus on the key industry sectors that most reflect its specialist skills base – construction and engineering, digital economy, finance, life sciences, real estate, renewables and energy and waste. The aim is to provide a dedicated service of highly specialised advice based on a thorough understanding of industry specific issues developed over years of working closely with market leading clients in each of these sectors.

For more detailed information on the specific services offered within each of the firm’s core disciplines visit www.semplefraser.co.uk or contact the relevant partner as listed in the column opposite.

Number of UK partners 23
Number of other UK fee-earners 68