Out of the shadows

Some law firms have the ability to hog the media spotlight with a mere stub of a press release – think PR-savvy brands like DLA Piper and Eversheds. Other City stalwarts pride themselves on following a deliberately low-profile path, to the extent that by looking at its website you would never know that Slaughter and May even has a PR function.

Then, of course, there is a third type: the firm that never seems to capture the media’s imagination, despite consistently performing well. It is into this latter bracket that Watson, Farley & Williams firmly slots.

Despite leaping ten places in the LB100 in 2009 through a recession-busting 23% rise in revenues to £72.5m, and recording a robust 34% profit margin beaten by only six firms in the top 50, the shipping finance specialist is known for little more than its string of failed merger talks. Even its strong counter-cyclical performance last year was overshadowed by the eye-watering turnover growth recorded by Kennedys (31%), Bird & Bird (30%) and its shipping rival Holman Fenwick Willan (27%).

As the firm that is ranked at number 40 in the UK by gross fees, Watson Farley outstrips more high-profile firms such as Charles Russell, Kennedys, LG and Travers Smith in terms of scale, but it chooses to keep its head down.

If Watson Farley lives in the shadows, managing partner Michael Greville is practically invisible. As the only partner in the firm without a fee-earning role, Greville has had a strong personal grip on firm management for the past eight years. He has presided over office closures, defections and a seeming inability to secure a merger deal, most recently with Chadbourne & Parke. However, he has also been instrumental in overcoming the stigma attached to these events, and in keeping up a momentum that has seen the firm achieve an average growth rate of 10% since 2005.

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