LAW firm Brodies saw both turnover and profitability increase by more than 10 per cent in the year to the end of April, with managing partner Nick Scott noting that clients had “been getting on with the day job” in spite of concerns over Brexit.
Turnover for the year was up by 12 per cent, from £68.6 million to £76.7m, while profits before partner distributions rose by 14%, from £32.9m to £37.4m.
“Trading was good, simply put,” said Mr Scott. “Client activity was resilient across the whole of the firm and each practice area made progress.
“At each point when we thought clients might take a step back from investment decisions they carried on.
“That was the case fairly consistently throughout the year and because trading was good we could focus on investing in our business.”
Most of that investment went on recruitment, with the firm adding several partners during the course of the year.
These included tax specialist Karen Davidson, who joined from accountancy business EY, as well as Aberdeen-based planning expert Elaine Farquharson-Black, who joined from Burness Paull. Brodies also promoted six new partners at the end of the financial year.
During the year the firm further increased its cash balance, with the sum rising by 11% to £21.8m. That means the firm’s cash reserves are now seven times higher than they were a decade ago, when its bank balance was £3m.
“That’s a function of us using cash as the predominant measure of business performance,” Mr Scott said.
“WIP [work in progress] is okay, but cash is the thing that’s the most important measure.
“It gives us the opportunity to make other business decisions if we want to.”
While Mr Scott said the cash pot had not been built up in order to fund Brodies’ move to new Edinburgh premises, he added that the firm would have to pay to fit out the Capital Square offices when it takes control of them next year.
“We’ll get the space as a shell at the end of this financial year and we’ll have to make decisions about how to fit it out,” he said.
Other investments the firm has made include overhauling its practice management system and updating its branding. The firm plans to unveil its new brand in the coming weeks.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here