Burges Salmon (Bristol)

Our view....

Burges Salmon and Osborne Clarke are the firms that dominate the Bristol legal scene and it's fair to say that the former is currently in the ascendant. It has stuck to a policy of steady organic growth, as befits a firm with a reputation as a restrained, stately sort of place with a conservative attitude to life. This stopped it putting as many eggs in the dotcom basket as Osbourne Clarke, and it has weathered recent economic ups and downs far more successfully. Average profits per equity partner are at a market-beating £414,000.

Burges Salmon has got a good name for banking, insolvency and corporate work and recently made moves to bolster its competition practice too. Notable recent successes included a £31m AIM flotation of new client Bristol & London, securing a place on the panel of the multinational aviation service BBA group, and nabbing its largest ever securitisation deal from under the noses of numerous Magic Circle candidates.

It also beat Slaughter & May, Denton Wilde Sapte and Dewey Ballantine to advise Honda UK on a refinancing and landed the job of advising the Ministry of Defence on the UK's largest ever PFI deal. And it boasts a client list featuring the likes of Coca Cola, Chanel and Orange.

The firm remains committed to Bristol and its single-office strategy (although it has got a bit of an office hidden away in London). It has also embarked on a much-improved marketing policy, revealing a new-found willingness to dip a toe into the waters of the modern age. Or at least get rid of the dodgy salmon-coloured paper it had previously insisted on using.

The firm associates seem to have no complaints at all: they voted Burges Salmon  RollOnFriday's Firm of the Year 2006. And it came second in both 2007 and 2008. And whilst it may have slipped down to sixth place in 2010's survey, lawyers still sung its praises for having "excellent work, great clients" and "a confident feel about where it's going". Plus there was much excitement about the new offices - "a vast improvement on the 1980s sweat boxes we were crammed into previously."

Prospective trainees should know that the firm gives GDL and LPC students maintenance grants of £7,000 each year wherever they choose to study. It reckons it's the only firm outside London to offer this level of maintenance.

For more information on recruitment at Burges Salmon click here.