Booth: Four-year plan for legal arm
Leonard Curtis has announced ambitions to double the size of its law firm after Pollen Street Capital took a majority stake in the restructuring and turnaround business.
The Manchester-headquartered firm launched its alternative business structure, Leonard Curtis Legal (LCL), in 2016. It currently has 19 fee-earners and a turnover of around £4m.
The wider group now has over 330 employees across 30 offices. It has been handling the administration of various law firms, including Axiom Ince, while LCL founder and chairman Andrew Gregory has acted as the solicitor manager for law firms in administration as well, including SSB Law.
LCL has formed part of the group’s strategy to create a multi-disciplinary approach to problem-solving for SMEs at every stage of the business lifecycle.
Pollen Street, a private capital asset manager, was supported by private credit investor TDC, and the deal will see the successful exit for multi-family investment office Arete and investment and acquisition vehicle Svella, which paid £15m for a significant stake in Leonard Curtis in August 2021.
Over that period, Leonard Curtis’s revenues increasing from £26m to over £45m, headcount from 230 to over 330, and its office network expanding from 18 to 30 locations. Arete said the exit delivered a 3.2x gross return for its investors.
Dan Booth, chief executive of Leonard Curtis, said: “The partnership and investment from Pollen Street Capital, together with support from TDC, will allow the business to move forward and better execute our plans to grow and develop the group.”
He told Legal Futures that the investment “will enable us to achieve our ambitions to double the size of our legal business” over the next four years.
Jonathan Guest, investment director at Pollen Street, said: “Leonard Curtis is a high-quality business with a proven model, experienced leadership, and has demonstrated strong organic growth in the UK and offshore.
“We are proud of our track record of supporting fast-growing players in the financial and business services ecosystems and are looking forward to partnering with the team for the next stage of Leonard Curtis’s growth, as it diversifies and scales organically, and further consolidates the fragmented UK professional services market.”
The growth of the law firm has in part been due to the Lifecycle network, a support service for over 3,000 regional accountancy firms provided on the basis that Leonard Curtis does not seek to usurp their client relationships. It is the same idea as Pannone’s old Connect2Law network.
Leave a Comment