The Legal 500

Withy King is an ambitious firm positioned within the M4 corridor and in London, with its principal offices in Bath, Swindon and Oxford, which attracts significant, high-value work from businesses and individuals and has developed a reputation for its innovative approach to meeting clients’ needs and its excellent client care.

The firm: Withy King was founded in 1883 and now employs nearly 250 people, including 45 partners. The firm has grown organically and via strategic merger to create new geographical markets, as well as niche or specialist expertise.

The firm has been awarded and subsequently re-awarded an ISO 9001 accreditation for the quality of its management processes and procedures.

Types of work undertaken: Withy King is a full-service firm and offers a comprehensive range of services both for businesses and individuals.

Commercial: the commercial teams advise on a full range of business law relating to employment advice and disputes, corporate/commercial contracts, M&A transactions, commercial disputes, and commercial property and construction advice and litigation. The firm’s commercial client base extends throughout the South of England and includes plcs, limited companies, public sector organisations, insurance companies, banks, IFAs, charities and education bodies. Servicing SMEs is at the core of Withy King’s commercial work.

Withy King has successfully developed multi-disciplinary industry sector teams to respond to client demand for a greater breadth and depth of legal and business knowledge. The business sector-based teams are operating in key business areas, including construction and engineering, retail and leisure, property development and planning, waste and minerals, technology and media, charities and education, as well as racing and bloodstock, agriculture and rural property.

Private client services: the private client teams offer specialist expertise to individuals on inheritance disputes, tax planning, trusts and wills, relationship and family law, and private property, as well as claimant clinical negligence and personal injury.

The wills, tax and trust team not only offers full estate planning and administration services, but also advice on complex trust planning. It has a strong reputation for tax planning advice for non-UK domiciled individuals. The team has an established reputation for its record in inheritance disputes, as well as being regional specialists for mental capacity and Court of Protection work.

Withy King’s family team has an acknowledged regional reputation for its comprehensive offering and outstanding results, particularly in the area of high-value ancillary relief and divorce cases. The team is family mediation-accredited and also includes four collaborative law specialists responding to the increasing demand for this less confrontational approach to divorce. The team has particular expertise relating to adoption and childcare issues, as well as a growing reputation for civil partnerships, pre-nuptial and cohabitation agreements advice.

Personal injury/clinical negligence: with a strong regional and national reputation for high-quality claimant work, both the clinical negligence and personal injury teams have been involved with a number of landmark cases. The clinical negligence team has national level expertise in claims relating to birth injury and cerebral palsy, fatal inquest hearings and the fast growing area of dental negligence. The personal injury team has a strong reputation for its spinal injury and catastrophic head injury work, as well as a strong profile for motorcycle accident claims. The team also has an enviable record in equine and sports injury and work-related accident claims.

Services innovation: as a response to client need, Withy King has developed an innovative approach to the delivery and pricing of services, which has given clients greater transparency and certainty of legal costs when budgeting. A comprehensive range of fixed price, retainer and insurance-based services have been developed which are ideal for organisations or individuals with less complex legal needs, but who need to adhere to strict budgets. Fixed, capped and blended rates, together with traditional hourly rates, are more appropriate for more complex legal needs.

Other offices: Abingdon, London, Marlborough, Thame.

Number of UK partners 45
Number of other UK fee-earners 86