Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (London)

Our view...

RPC has traditionally been best known for its core litigation practice, making up over half of its workload. Wake up at the back! OK, this doesn't sound too sexy. But have no fear - there's more to RPC than meets the eye. And it's obviously doing something right - staff love the place, voting it into a highly-impressive second place in the 2011 Firm of the Year survey.

So it's litigation front and centre, with a traditional focus on the insurance industry. But the firm has diversified its reach, too, raming up its corporate offering and spreading into just about every dispute resolution nook. And it's managed to achieve this whilst avoiding the common problem of leaving other departments feeling sidelined - with significant internal growth (and plenty of lateral hiring) in non-contentious specialisms.

This means that it can support a variety of rather sexier departments. Its punchy media litigation practice has previously acted for The Telegraph Group, the Mirror Group and the Guardian as well as Associated Newspapers - them of the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail (and it seems there's plenty of defamation defending to do). The nature of the work means it is frequently in the papers. Work on the (not not so) new Wembley stadium and the batch of Harry Potter books that went missing being just two examples of headline-chasing stuff.

It's not a big firm, with around 250 fee earners, but it has a very snazzy glass and steel office near Tower Bridge. Which is entirely open plan. Although there were the inevitable grumbles about this when it was announced, it's proving to be very popular. Well, reasonably popular anyway.

The main grumbles used to be about lack of support after 5.30, but that's been improved recently. In the old days, when the firm was still insurance-led, this was largely because most people pushed off home by 6pm. Nowadays that's less likely to be the case, especially as overtime is paid (though not for lawyer types, obviously). The firm is aiming for a 50/50 split between insurance and commercial work, and this has meant an inevitable increase in hours: gone are the days when you'd find yourself home in time for Eastenders. But insiders report that they still work relatively civilised hours in comparison with larger corporate firms. And the people come in for tremendous praise, described as "genuinely friendly", "relaxed"  and - hold the front page -"people you would be friends with outside of work". It really does seem to be a very happy ship. One correspondent said "I love my life", a phrase we never thought we'd ever hear from a lawyer.

Which is just as well, because pay (for departments outside corporate at least) is hardly market leading (and the support staff holiday allowance seems a bit tight, too). But then profits haven't been stellar either, and as these start to climb in response to the firm's focus on transactional work the hope is that the figures on the right should be nudged up. In the meantime, the work/life balance is a pretty good one. And it's one of the few City firms to have a completely equity partnership, so it's worth hanging in there to get your name on the letterhead. Just watch out for the lifts, which seem to give all users regular static electricty shocks.

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