The Legal 500

Burges Salmon is a leading UK law firm offering the highest standards of legal and business advice across all the major practice areas and its chosen industry sectors.

The firm: Burges Salmon is widely recognised for the quality of its expertise in a range of areas, including corporate, commercial, litigation, property and tax & trusts. Operating from first-class offices, the firm competes in the global market, serving its clients’ needs in the UK and also abroad through a ‘better friends’ network.

Their working culture is open and collegiate, allowing them the flexibility to build the right team to fit the situation of every client, delivering the right commercial outcome for their needs. Current clients include FirstGroup, The Crown Estate, Helius Energy, Lloyds Banking Group and the NDA.

Types of work undertaken: Corporate, commercial and financial: the firm’s corporate finance team provides a full service to corporate and business clients, ranging from emerging enterprises to multinational corporations. Experience includes M&A, takeovers, flotations and equity financings, private equity and joint ventures. The banking team advises on all aspects of banking and finance, including corporate banking, asset finance, structured finance, corporate rescue and restructuring, securitisations, derivatives and property finance. The employment, pensions and incentives team advises public, private sector and pension trustee clients on all aspects of related law. The commercial team advises on general commercial, UK/EU competition, regulation, projects, procurement, IP, technology and ecommerce. It has extensive knowledge and experience in a range of sectors, including food, transport, defence, PFI/PPP, logistics, telecoms, financial services, nuclear, emergency services and government contracting.

Real estate, planning and environment: the real estate practice caters for a number of specialist areas, including property investment and finance, rail, corporate occupier and portfolio management. The firm’s planning practice provides advice on all aspects of development, regeneration, compulsory purchase and energy. Burges Salmon has one of the UK’s largest and longest-established pure environmental law teams, advising both the public and private sectors. Much of its work in the nuclear and renewable energy sectors is pioneering.

Tax and trusts, and agriculture: the tax and trusts team is one of the largest in the UK and provides an expanding international client base with services including tax and estate planning; wealth structuring; commercial tax; trusts, wills and probate; tax compliance and investigations; property taxation; and matrimonial/co-habitation disputes and also has specialist remuneration and charities units. Still recognised as the UK’s leading practice, Burges Salmon’s agriculture, food and farming team draws upon 20 lawyers, including 10 partners from across the firm’s practice areas. An integrated and comprehensive range of services are provided including advice on tenancy litigation, estates and tax planning and co-operative law.

Litigation and dispute resolution: Burges Salmon’s disputes practice covers a wide range of dispute resolution and contentious work involving litigation, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution. The focus is on commercial disputes, with specialisms including corporate, banking, financial services, rail, health and safety, defamation and media, IP, insolvency, pensions, insurance and professional negligence. The firm’s property litigation team specialises in commercial property disputes, including landlord and tenant issues. The specialist construction team advises on contentious and non-contentious construction, technical and engineering matters.

Breakdown of work %
Administrative and support services 2.4
Agriculture, forestry and fishing 1
Arts, entertainment and recreation 1.6
Compulsory social security 0.5
Construction 3.9
Defence 3.8
Education 1.5
Electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply 7.7
Finance 17.1
Human health and social work 1.7
Information and communication 1.9
Insurance 7.6
Manufacturing 10.5
Mining and quarrying 1.1
Other services 1.6
Private individual 6
Professional, scientific and technical activities 1.6
Public administration 3.6
Real estate 5.8
Transportation and storage 10.3
Water supply, sewage, waste management, remediation 3.9
Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motor cycles 4.9

Number of UK partners 69
Number of other UK fee-earners 354
Total staff 553