Black: Milner is an established name in Yorkshire
Private equity-backed Orwins has continued its rapid expansion by adding Yorkshire firm Milners and London’s Roe Lawyers – accounting for an extra £6m of revenue – to the group.
They follow Reading firm Clarkslegal in May and Newcastle practice Clarke Mairs in July.
Backed by Aliter Capital, Manchester-headquartered Orwins – which was until May known as BBS Law – now has over 250 staff and combined revenues of £34m.
As we revealed in April, its plan is to hit a turnover of at least £50m in the next two years as it builds across the country.
The Orwins model contrasts with some others in the market by expressly not looking to cut costs and overheads in the firms it acquires, which can retain their own brands. In this instance, Roe Lawyers has merged into the parent Orwins firm.
Milners is a full-service law firm with seven partners and 41 staff headquartered in Leeds and offices in Harrogate, Malton, Darlington and Pontefract.
Five-strong Roe Lawyers is a boutique criminal, white collar, extradition and regulatory law practice.
Orwins chief executive Dov Black said: “Milners has earned a strong and established reputation in the Yorkshire community. Alongside this, we were particularly impressed by Milners’ personable and flexible approach to client relationships, which closely reflects the way we work at Orwins.”
The Roe Lawyers team brought “specialist crime and regulatory services into the group as a further area of expertise”.
Simon Bass, managing partner of Milners, said: “In Orwins, we believe we have found a like-minded partner, and we look forward with real excitement to the opportunities created for our team and our clients by this alliance. Joining Orwins will take the business to the next level.”
Stephanie Roe, founder and managing partner at Roe Lawyers said: “Building a highly respected private client criminal law firm has been enormously rewarding and my entire team is rightly proud of what we have achieved.
“The legal market is however changing, with client needs best served with a greater range of support in other legal areas.”
Milners’ partners and Ms Roe are becoming shareholders in Orwins.
In other M&A news, national law firm Clarke Willmott has acquired business immigration firm Latitude Law.
Nearly 19 years old, Manchester-headquartered Latitude Law has 14 fee-earners and six other staff, and other offices in London and Brussels.
Clarke Willmott said that the move was “a key strategic milestone” in its growth plans, “broadening its practice offering in response to increasing client demand for specialist immigration advice. It also creates new opportunities to provide integrated legal services across the firm, particularly for its existing corporate and private wealth clients”.
Latitude managing partner Gary McIndoe said: “When I started Latitude Law almost 20 years ago, I didn’t envisage it would grow into such a widely recognised specialist firm.
“Joining Clarke Willmott is an exciting and positive next step for us. We share culture, values and vision, and I’m confident that together we can offer our clients an even stronger service.”
City firm Fenchurch Law has joined forces with US firm Saxe Doernberger & Vita (SDV), Spanish practice Wesolowski Abogados, and CLIR & Fenchurch in France – part of Fenchurch’s international network – to form SDV Fenchurch, a global law firm with over 90 lawyers that exclusively represents policyholders and the brokers who advise them, and never insurers.
Existing Fenchurch offices in Denmark, Norway, Turkey and Singapore will also form part of the new operation.
In July 2025, SDV – which has six offices in the US – and Fenchurch Law announced a “best friends” partnership and have now gone a step further. CLIR & Fenchurch only launched earlier this year.
The new firm is structured as a Swiss verein. In a statement, SDV Fenchurch said this allowed the member firms “to perform for clients as a single, coordinated firm while remaining separately regulated legal entities in each jurisdiction”.
It went on: “The structure was chosen in order to support the firm’s expansion into all key insurance jurisdictions across the world, while preserving the entrepreneurial cultures and independence that have made each founding firm successful.
“The verein structure also allows the firm to be selective about who joins. Membership requires an exclusive policyholder focus and a top-tier reputation in the local market.”
Tracy Saxe, co-chair of SDV Fenchurch and founder of SDV, said: “For 30 years, we have believed that policyholders deserve lawyers whose loyalty is never divided.
“Every firm coming together to create SDV Fenchurch shares that goal: to level the playing field for policyholders in their dealings with insurers, and to perform the highest-quality legal work in the world while we do it.”
The other co-chair, David Pryce, founder of Fenchurch Law, said: “Insurance is a global market, and the disputes that come out of it have been global for a long time.
“What has been missing is a firm built specifically to meet policyholders on that footing. We have been the first firm to practice on a policyholder-only basis in several of the markets we operate in, and we know how much of a difference that focus makes…
“Our ambition is to be undisputably recognized as the leading firm in the world for policyholders. Getting there means continuing to bring in firms and lawyers who share this goal. We expect to explore opportunities in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America very soon.”
Growth is also planned within existing markets. SDV recently opened in Massachusetts and is considering offices in Houston, Chicago and the District of Columbia, as well as more in California, where it has one office.
AGRD Partners, the private-equity powered group of Nordic law firms, has added newly named Ascente Law, formerly the Malmö office of Swedish law firm Setterwalls, to the group.
It is AGRD’s largest investment to date and fifth in 2026. The group is now made up of 10 Swedish law firms and one from Iceland.
Ascente Law is a full-service corporate and commercial practice with particular strength in patent litigation, handling a major portion of Sweden’s larger patent court cases, alongside specialisms such as energy and infrastructure, environmental and water law. I
We reported in March that AGRD was looking to expand across the Nordic region and had also had interest from UK practices.
Finally, listed legal business NAHL has announced a binding conditional agreement to sell its conveyancing subsidiary, Searches UK, to TM Group for £1.2m.
Searches UK has been part of NAHL since 2016. It has 11 employees and in 2025 achieved revenues of £3.3m and EBITDA of £363,000. EBITDA for the 12 months to 30 June 2026, adjusted for customer churn since the year end and recent cost savings, was £235,000, meaning a sale multiple of 5.25.
NAHL told investors: “Following the sale of the group’s other residential property business, Homeward Legal Limited, in 2023, the board considers Searches UK to be non-core to the group’s principal focus and as a result, considers the transaction to be in the best interests of NAHL’s shareholders.”
The deal needs the approval of the Competition and Markets Authority.
NAHL chief executive James Saralis said: “Searches UK is a great business with a fantastic team but is no longer core to our principal activities. As a result, we are confident that now is the right time for TM Group to take the business forward.”
Leave a Comment