Shutting down: Orderly closure
A well-known personal injury law firm is in the process of shutting down after its funder pulled its backing.
AWH Solicitors, based in Manchester and Blackburn, has filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators.
Its work in progress has been picked up by a number of other firms.
“Clients are being looked after, and we’ve done our best to protect as many jobs as possible through the process,” said chief executive Abdul Hussain.
He said he expected that around 45 staff would be moving to new firms and that there would be about 15 redundancies.
AWH came to prominence in 2018 after buying industrial disease specialist Roberts Jackson and subsequently completed other acquisitions of firms and WIP books.
Its published accounts show a year-after-year fall in turnover since Covid, from £7.9m in 2020 to £3.25m in 2023; profits went from £1.25m to a £29,000 loss over the same period. Its 2024 accounts are overdue
The 2023 accounts described the company’s areas of focus as growing the law firm via acquisitions and managing its “long-term debt flows”.
AWH worked predominantly on clinical negligence and noise-induced hearing loss claims – nothing “speculative or exotic”, Mr Hussian observed.
He told Legal Futures: “Like a number of practices in the litigation funding space, we found ourselves caught in the fallout from the wider contraction of the funding market.
“Our funder informed us that no further capital would be available for our caseload — a decision that reflects a pattern we’ve seen across the sector following the collapse of SSB and others.
“The funding withdrawal wasn’t a reflection of our cases or our conduct; it was a consequence of funders pulling back from the market broadly.”
Mr Hussain said the AWH team tried to find alternative funding, “but the market simply isn’t there at the moment for firms in our position”.
He continued: “Once it became clear we couldn’t bridge the gap, we made the decision to wind down in an orderly way rather than let things deteriorate – which we felt was the right thing to do for our clients and staff.”
Mr Hussain noted that there were other firms that shared directors or have “loose associations” in the market with AWH Solicitors– for example, separate company AWH Acquisitions Holdings bought legal aid practice Cartwright King out of administration in 2023.
But he stressed that they were unaffected. “AWH Solicitors operated entirely independently, with its own funding arrangements, its own liabilities, and its own client base. The wind-down relates solely to that entity.
“There are other firms I’m involved with, but they operate in entirely different areas of law that don’t involve litigation funding, carry no related debts, and are completely unaffected by what has happened here.”
Those affected internally understand that redundancies are likely to exceed 15. There is a feeling that this outcome stems from an over-reliance on funding and expansion through acquisitions, rather than safeguarding the long-term viability of this firm as a standalone business