Liverpool city region law firm Fletchers Solicitors is reporting annual pre-tax profits of £2.1m after seeing a £200,000 loss in the previous year. Tony McDonough reports
Fletchers Solicitors is reporting a year of what it described as “exceptional growth” with revenues up 26% and a return to profit.
Southport-based Fletchers, which also has offices in Liverpool and Manchester, said revenues in the year to April 2023 came in at £43m. Pre-tax profits hit £2.1m, compared to a £200,000 loss in the previous year.
Chief financial officer, Alex Lynch said investment in more direct-to-consumer marketing spend and the purchase by Fletchers of case acquisition specialists Blume in November 2022 had helped deliver this increase in revenues.
Fletchers Group is a UK market leader in clinical negligence and personal injury cases. It employs more than 900 people across offices in Southport, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bolton and Cambridge.
The acquisition of Blume was behind a 17% increase in case signings, with a trend towards higher value cases also boosted by other acquisitions during that period including Cycle SOS in May 2022 and Minton Morrill in September 2022.
Fletchers opened two new offices in Leeds and Liverpool during 2022-23 to extend its market reach across the north and attract more talent.
The firm has previously said it is pursuing an aggressive mergers and acquisitions strategy after itself being taken over by private equity outfit Sun European Partners in 2021.
Chief executive Peter Haden said: “Our people proposition is core to sustaining our success and building a diverse and inclusive working environment is a major focus of our Responsible Business Strategy, launched in 2023.
“We lead the market in enabling colleagues from non-traditional backgrounds to build a career in the law and have issued stretching targets on gender, ethnicity and social mobility.”
He added the firm continued to invest in technology, in particular AI and machine learning. A renewed partnership with the data science department at the University of Liverpool is building on the organisation’s earlier work to speed up the claims process.
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Peter added: “AI has saved time and helped direct work towards the right person for the job, but we still make sure our specialist colleagues make any final decisions.
“We intend to leverage our experience with the University to build additional tools which will help grow our practice and ultimately open up access to justice for more people.”