Hill Dickinson (Manchester)

Our view....

Hill Dickinson remain at heart an insurance specialist firm, despite recent attempts to diversify in response to the ever-increasing competition in the insurance market (and subsequent pressure on fees).

In 2002 it merged with niche Manchester property firm Gorna & Co in order to expand its Liverpool-based property practice. 2004 saw it announce a four year plan to move into the more profitable marine, environmental, fraud and corporate risk insurance sectors.

Their Manchester office has also made some solid individual hires over the last couple of years, including a construction partner from Hammonds, a three-partner clinical negligence team plus a dozen assistants and support staff from George Davies, and a number of recruits from the now-defunct firm Elliotts. The George Davies hires were a particularly useful crop as they brought enough NHS Litigation Authority work with them to make Hill Dickinson probably the biggest recipient of such work in the north west. That work itself may be notoriously unlucrative, but it has helped the firm nose onto the radar of 19 NHS trusts who are starting to send more valuable projects their way as a result.  

Hill Dicks is starting to shake off a reputation for lacking energy and direction, and the Manchester office - which has just invested £7m in the rare purchase of the freehold of its premises - seems confident in its future and in the vanguard of the change. Five commercial litigators were moved from Liverpool to Manchester in January 2006, and over the last few months the office has bagged yet more lateral hires, including an employment partner and the former head of insurance litigation at DLA's Manchester office. Not that this seems to have affected internal prospects - five Manchester assistants were promoted to partner this year.