Highland games

‘The bravest move I’ve ever seen’ is one Scottish managing partner’s frank assessment of Eversheds’ decision to launch in Edinburgh amid one of the deepest recessions in living memory. With most firms looking to cut costs, the timing of such an investment may seem questionable. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, however: Eversheds had been looking at Scotland for over a decade.

While Eversheds held tentative discussions with both Burness and McClure Naismith over the years (the latter a fellow member of the World Law Group that Eversheds left in 2007), the name most commonly mentioned alongside Eversheds is the ‘big four’ firm McGrigors. Indeed, two former McGrigors partners have set up Eversheds’ new office: Colin Gray and Colin McKay. Gray was the firm’s managing partner until his term ended in January 2008. McKay lost out to former corporate head Richard Masters in a contested election to replace him. Both studied together in the University of Glasgow’s LLB class of 1980 and joined Eversheds’ London office in June last year. Having spent months working out of Caffè Nero on Edinburgh’s Lothian Road and the Santini restaurant at Conference Square, the pair finally moved into a small office on Melville Street, a stone’s throw from bustling Princes Street. Real estate partner Michael Spence has since been brought in, also from McGrigors, as a senior associate on a fast track to partnership.

Eversheds and McGrigors have long been touted as potential merger partners, and although it has previously been dismissed as a product of Scotland’s infamous legal rumour mill, talks did, in fact, take place. Gray was receptive to the proposed tie-up, but struggled to find support among the McGrigors partnership, which was reluctant to agree to any merger that would effectively result in the firm being taken over. This ultimately led to his departure, with the move to Eversheds based on an agreement that the firm would launch a greenfield Edinburgh office.

To read the rest of this article subscribe to Legal Business.