About us

Our lawyers provide tailored, practical and innovative advice to help your organisation achieve its objectives. We help clients that are in early conversations about company formation; are seeking to raise capital; and need guidance concerning real estate, governance, tax, or compensation and benefits matters. We also work with clients that are looking to execute their growth, restructuring, or exit strategy – or are a lender or an arranger of capital raising.

Each of our clients is unique, which is why we take the time to understand their business’ strategic visions and goals as well as the challenges it will face. We apply our experience and judgement to fast-moving situations and changing circumstances to deliver insight and effective solutions to corporates, financial institutions, investors and governments around the world.

With one of the largest fully integrated platforms of any law firm, our Corporate & Finance team consistently earns Top 10 rankings globally, as well as in our local markets.

Our Global Regulatory & Intellectual Property, Media and Technology (IPMT) practice is comprised of two globally recognised, market-leading teams, each with a strong UK presence. 

Our Global Regulatory team of 100+ regulatory lawyers and advisors in the UK work closely with our industry sector groups, other practice areas and regulatory colleagues around the world to provide holistic strategies for the most challenging issues. There’s a reason why Chambers UK (2021) recognised us as “a brilliant regulatory firm”. We are specialists; we have a deep understanding of the sectors we work in and a deep understanding of how governments, legislators and regulators operate, in principle and in practice. That means that we can understand, interpret and translate business needs and policy objectives, providing clients with the intelligence they need to make business-critical decisions and delivering effective engagement with decision makers in their language. We deliver solutions that are legally, commercially and politically astute.

Our IPMT practice advises more than half of the world’s top 100 brands (Financial Times) to protect their ideas, innovations, and brands. We combine our global outlook with local knowledge across the life cycle of IP assets ― from development to commercialisation, licensing through to maturity.  Our UK IPMT practice has over 25 dedicated IP lawyers and specialists. We work with all types of IP owners, ranging from household names to high-growth businesses. Our team advises some of the world’s most innovative players to maximise the value of a company’s IP assets and minimise risk throughout an entire portfolio. We have a proven track record of successfully representing clients in IP disputes before the UK courts, including landmark decisions before the Supreme Court. We leverage this experience to devise robust IP litigation strategies on behalf of our clients – achieving success where others have failed. 

Our litigation group guides clients through courts, tribunals and government bodies, around the world. We have a history of success and prestigious reputation thanks to our talented, experienced and dedicated lawyers.

From helping one of the largest banks in Kazakhstan recover assets worth $6bn, to defending the world’s largest tech company in The European Court of Justice, we work on some of the most exciting cases in the industry. Hailed by industry commentators as “the best of the best” a “a go-to firm” with a “prestigious reputation”. We advise 72 of the fortune 100, 41 of the FTSE 100 and 23 of the Dax 30. We have 800 lawyers focused on litigation and arbitration working as one team around the world, across borders and time zones, on behalf of our clients.

• Aerospace, Defence and Government Services 
• Automotive and Mobility 
• Consumer 
• Diversified Industrials 
• Education 
• Energy and Natural Resources 
• Financial Institutions 
• Insurance 
• Life Sciences and Health care 
• Real Estate 
• Technology, Media and Telecoms (TMT)

We’re intent on building a better tomorrow and that starts with taking action today. Sustainability is key to securing our future and we always champion it where possible. We’ve signed the UN Business Ambition for 1.5°C and Race to Zero to ensure we consistently work towards reducing our carbon emissions. We have a robust CDP reporting framework and also founded the Legal Sustainability Alliance to drive change across the industry. 

We’re always looking for ways to drive sustainable practice. Recently, we’ve updated our travel, energy and real estate policies, developed and implemented more sustainable procurement policies and audited our existing suppliers to make more informed procurement decisions. Join us as a trainee and we’ll look to you to lend your voice on these issues and help direct us as a firm to create a stronger future. 

As a firm, and as individuals, having an impact on our communities and society is a huge priority to us. To ensure the work and resources we commit towards those efforts is as effective as possible, we developed a series of strategic themes and partnerships. They include:

Advancing racial justice

We bring our resources, skills and influence to work collaboratively in the community to address institutionalised racial discrimination.

Empowering women and girls and supporting youth.

To empower women and girls and support youth is to disrupt the trends of untapped potential, creating thriving local communities and igniting the global economy. 

Supporting innovation in environmental protection and advancing our sustainability goals

We partner with The Wildlife Trusts, Snowchange Cooperative, Rewilding Europe, and Rewilding Britain to find solutions to environmental stresses such as climate change and biodiversity loss and to promote approaches towards ecological stability and renewal.

Peace and reconciliation

We work with PeaceTech Lab, our global non-profit partner to implement lasting solutions to uphold human rights, reduce violence, and ensure inclusive participation.

External crises and change

We recognise our responsibility to offer support to humanitarian crises caused by natural disasters and we do this through our long-standing partnerships with CARE International and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
 

Collectively, we spend 150,000+ hours a year on pro bono work that achieves a lasting impact for others. By making pro bono work a strategic priority for the firm, we can ensure the great causes we work towards always get the resources and commitment they deserve. Our work stretches from supporting groups and individuals in our local communities to implementing strategic litigation to bring about systematic change. Our industry-leading approach to co-ordinating pro bono work involves partner leadership of the practice in the U.S. and we also appointed an International Pro Bono Partner, the first appointment of its kind, in Europe in 2020.

We collaborate with ground-breaking and innovative organisations to support them to deliver their goals and scale their impact. We’re proud to contribute our time and skills to offer support where there are gaps in knowledge, resources and funding. Our local work supports our global aim to drive inclusive and sustainable development in which people and the planet thrive.

PeaceTech Lab is our current global non-profit partner. They benefit from strategic support across our 46 offices as well as fundraising by our people over the three-year partnership. At a local level, each of our offices chooses a non-profit in their community to work with. Our people undertake fundraising activities and as a firm we match donations by our people to further the impact of our non-profit partners.

HL BaSE is our foundation for building sustainable value for our clients and stakeholders. We believe international goals and policies such as UN SDGs and the Paris agreement are only achievable through strong partnerships, increased collaboration, sharing of insights and the creation of innovative financial solutions. HL BaSE empowers our lawyers to work with social enterprises, charities and impact investment projects. It helps make outstanding legal advice accessible to everyone trying to create positive change across the world. They run multiple programmes from a catalyst programme for social enterprises to a thriving legal practice. 

As a trainee, you’ll work on their training course where you’ll learn about the fundamentals of business and what drives clients’ big decisions. You’ll learn how to be more entrepreneurial so you can win more work and you’ll discover how important the way we conduct ourselves is to our firm’s success.