TLT (Bristol)

Our view....pushing hard for a podium finish in Bristol

TLT is a decade old - it was formed by a merger between Trumps and Lawrence Tuckets in 2000 and only acquired a London office in April 2005 when it merged with boutique firm Lawrence Jones. But in these few years it has become one of the most profitable outfits in the region.

2009/10 was a year of recovery for the Bristol shop (like everywhere else), with profits per equity partner hitting £285,000, up from a credit crunched £198,000 the year before. Compare this with the piffling £163,000 posted by the more established Clarke Willmott, and £235,000 at Bond Pearce. It's still short of the profits posted by Bristol's two grandest firms, Burges Salmon (£414,000) and Osborne Clarke (£393,000), but it looks like delivering on its ambition to be the number three firm in Bristol - a desire which looked pretty fanciful only a year ago.

The firm has five practice areas: real estate, commercial services, employment, banking and lender services and private business. Traditionally it capitalised on the fact that other regional firms didn't tend to have much of a regional focus, and it has picked up good work from smaller, regional based companies such as Avon Rubber Group and Aardman Animations. Cracking. Now that it's made more of a name for itself the proportion of finance and corporate work it does for bigger ticket clients - Barclays, WH Smith, Orange, EDF Energy, The Metropolitan Police, Nationwide and The Co-operative Group - is increasing, and there's a commensurate rise in its profits.

Assistants say that your experience at the firm will depend on the sort of deals on which you're working. On the upside, if you work for more local clients you'll be allowed off the leash, given early responsibility and lots of client contact and put in reasonable hours. On the downside, you can find yourself working hard on the more minor aspects of a deal for Barclays whilst lawyers at City firms bag the more interesting stuff.

But with that in mind, the firm does more than most to try and ensure that staff have a decent work/life balance. Many of its lawyers work flexible hours or share jobs, and it's clearly a chummy place to work - partners (of whom there are 63) were described by one Roffer as "some of the nicest people I've met". Praise indeed. Although that was tempered a bit by one TLT-er likening it to "a car factory where people put the same screw in day after day."

The firm also makes a big play of how everyone has a part to play in its growth, and it really does seem to be a more egalitarian environment than most law firms. Everyone is asked to become involved in business development activities, the offices are open plan, everyone dresses down and the requirements for making partner are sufficiently transparent to be published on the firm's intranet (although that doesn't mean that chances of promotion are any better here than anywhere else).

TLT has the ability and desire to expand - managing partner David Pester has stated his aim of taking the firm into the top 50 - and that moment is getting closer. So one to watch.

N.B. Salaries stated are for Bristol only. From NQ onwards, salaries stated are an average of the band available at each PQE level. London NQs get £49,250. And trainee retention for 2010/11 was a tremendous 100%.

For more information on TLT click here