Following its merger with SP Law earlier in the year, EMW is back in Northampton. Business Times caught up with its Head of Corporate, Simon Arkell, on what this means for him and his team.
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What does being in Northampton mean to you?
It means a lot. Our Corporate team was born in 1993 when EMW first opened for business in an office just off the Queen Eleanor roundabout in Northampton. Although we subsequently relocated to be closer to the accountants and banks we were doing much of our business with at the time, the emotional ties with Northampton remain. A number of our Partners and staff started their legal careers in Northampton and still live in and around the town.
How has the team changed since you were last in Northampton?
In some respects massively and in others, very little!
When we started out in Northampton, our Corporate team comprised a Partner, a junior solicitor and a legal secretary. We marketed ourselves as “boutique” – a small team working in a very narrow area of transactional work – private equity backed management buy-outs.
Today we are a team of over 20 advising on pretty much every type of corporate transaction, from company and business acquisitions and disposals, sales to employee ownership trusts, joint ventures, equity and debt funding, group restructures, corporate governance and yes, we still advise on private equity-backed management buy-outs!
So that’s how it’s changed. How has it stayed the same?
Who we are and what we do may have evolved over the years, but our brand, culture and approach to what we do hasn’t. Often imitated, but never replicated, it is part of our DNA.
We are genuinely different to other lawyers and what set us apart 30 years ago still sets us apart today:
- Clients see in us a little bit of themselves. We attract dynamic, owner-managed businesses because we are one;
- Our service comes with a healthy dose of personality. Down to earth and easy to talk to, we take what we do really seriously, but we do not come with that sense of self-importance that is sometimes found in lawyers;
- We take the time to properly understand the goals and ambitions of our clients. Only then can we really add value by framing our advice accordingly (incidentally, everyone seems to say that these days, but there is a world of difference between putting it in your marketing and properly understanding and delivering it;
- We focus negotiations on what is important to our clients and never waste their or our time and money on things that are not – showboating is not our style;
- We never present our clients with a bewildering array of options and invite them to choose. We are not afraid to start sentences with “If I were you, this is what I would do”, which seems to be anathema to some lawyers;
- It is common for specialist lawyers to be parachuted into stand-alone parts of a deal without a map, and then stymie the transaction by negotiating in a vacuum. Everyone at EMW fully understands each transaction in the context of their responsibilities. We operate as one family;
- Lawyers are often accused of low-balling quotes to win work and then seeking to hike them up later on. We offer clear and transparent pricing options with no nasty surprises. Unless what we are required to do changes, the fee we quote will be the fee we charge.
This isn’t just talk – we are confident our clients will always feel they have had exceptional service from us and have backed that up with a service level guarantee – any client that doesn’t feel this way may unilaterally reduce our fees by up to 10%, no strings attached.
What does a physical presence in Northampton actually mean though? The way we work has changed. Hasn’t globalisation rendered the office just a place where we log in from?
No. I actually think the world has already moved on from what you have just described.
Our commitment to the regions in which we are based is perhaps best demonstrated by one standout achievement that we are very proud of. This is the first full reporting period during which EMW has been a certified B Corporation.
Seeking B Corp certification wasn’t something we needed to debate for long – it was clear from the very outset that what it represented was consistent with our values and beliefs about how business should be conducted in the 21st century. Protection and promotion of our local community is a key pillar of B Corp status. More generally, B Corp certification is a designation that a business is meeting the highest standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency in areas such as employee benefits, charitable giving, environmental impact and supply chain practices. All companies operate for the benefit of their stakeholders, but as a B Corp we include our employees, clients, suppliers, local community and environment among our stakeholders. We are currently:
- the only B Corp-certified law firm with its head office based in the region;
- one of only 10 law firms in the whole of the UK to achieve this certification.
One example of our local community impact is the work we do on employee ownership trusts (EOTs). In Tracy Evans we have a Corporate Partner who is one of the country’s leading legal advisors in this field. Following something akin to “the John Lewis model”, EOT’s are trusts set up for the benefit of a company’s employees. By specialising in selling to EOTs, we have played, and continue to play, a pre-eminent role in the growth of employee ownership, made a hugely positive impact on the commercial landscape of the regions in which we operate. In the last 4 years we have advised on 39 EOT sales with an aggregate value of more than £245 million, thereby extending an ownership stake in the business in which they work to thousands of employees.
Finally, as further evidencing our commitment to Northamptonshire, we were already doing significant work in the region before the merger with SP Law – in the last 18 months we have acted on 17 transactions (with a combined value of more than £150 million) involving investment by or in, or the acquisition or sale of or by, Northants based businesses.
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