Do they still have those awful offices in Clarkenwell? 

I had an interview there once. Heads of Com Prop seemed like nice people. I got the impression they shunt a lot of work to Cardiff. 

I never really understood why people chose to work in the London offices of regional firms. You still have the sky high living and housing costs of being in London but you only get paid 12k or so more than your regional colleagues yet are expected to work London hours alongside proper London/city firms. If you want to work at a regional firm why not work in their regional office where they are well known/better respected?

I used to instruct their commercial property department. They never gave the impression of being rushed off their feet, but they were perfectly good.

The trouble with the firm was they over-expanded. Bought up some lovely old market town firms in the sticks, and became a colossus. I think they're over their financial woes now.

In short, if you must work in private practice, you can do a lot worse. 

(Their offices in Clerkenwell were fine, though I believe they've moved now.)

I never heard of them until yesterday morning. Mrs JM woke in a cold sweat after dreaming she'd accepted a job there. I have nothing further to add. 

Tier 2? We're all Tier 5 now,  doncha know?

Nice firm with good work but don't pay that well.

In the hope that your user name of choice isn't indicative of your work ethic, we are recruiting in your area.  You might want to fire in a CV on the off chance.  No idea how to do anonymous messages though, so this may not be much help - sorry! 

But we're in the top band of all the real estate sub-sectors in Legal 500 and Chambers (and all the other nonsense publications) in which case I suspect other big practices will be recruiting too.  Despite the doom and gloom messages and the noises around redundancies, we're pretty bullish about the short to medium term.  And without wishing to appear rude, as I am sure they are lovely people and perfectly capable, I don't think BM register on any list of rated London firms.  That's not necessarily bad unless you want to do the bigger deals in the sector (and yes I realise that most people on this site will see big ticket RE deals as being at or near the bottom of the pile in terms of interesting City work)    

Anyway, good luck!

I have almost entirely good things to say about the firm. A very good ratio of decent people and very good lawyers to complete w**kers for a law firm. For the sort of market level that the firm operates at, it has a good reputation and produces good work across the board. Everybody that I ever dealt with was approachable and the culture was great.

The firm was not however particularly well run. Not a disaster by any stretch or an unpleasant place to work, but just incapable of building on a good platform. Nowhere near commercial enough. A perfect example of how not to do a merger - two legacy firms without a dominant partner and a lot of suspicion - lots of resentment. The few whisperings I’ve heard suggest that things have got worse on that front in the last few years.

Real Estate seemed to buck that trend though - the strongest practice in the firm when I was there and not bogged down by politics.

Working in the London office of a regional firm would be completely different to working at the second biggest law firm in Cardiff for example. Newish London office is nice enough, although as you can imagine pretty cramped. 

Cheers to everyone for the replies.

@Lurk - Mainly because the pay would be about £24K more, though fair point.  Not really interested in any of their regional locations they have offices in.

@Jelly - What a fantastically timed piece of clairvoyance. I will consult on any other firms I fancy applying to. 

@Pinot -  I refuse to confirm or deny, but the fact I am on ROF may be sufficient evidence.  Which firm?

@NB - That's exactly what I am worried by.  Not sure whether its worth applying to a firm that could face troubles down the road.  Think their finances aren't great either

From an employee’s perspective I never saw any evidence of financial troubles. Not that i would have been included in those sorts of discussions, but until I left a few years ago the firm seemed quite happy to invest in various areas and the only people jettisoned were as a result of essentially having two sets of every support function post-merger. Pay wasn’t great in the regions, but they were addressing that at the more junior end anyway.

It was more that the overall strategy seemed confused. High-profile large-scale public sector work was the cornerstone of at least one regional office, but viewed with scorn by those at the top. Other parts of the business would have no problem taking on small claims against the NHS despite it being idiotic to firm strategy. Completely different practice areas crudely grouped together into the same ‘division’ and forced onto the same strategy. The Built Environment division seemed to not get dragged into that.

My experience was that the firm was full of great people and excellent lawyers for the most part, but held back from making the most of that. Although I always thought that each different office would be like working at a different firm - so not sure how much use my comments are to London.

I read that as "corn real estate".

Surely there'd be more demand for AgProp in the Shires, I thought.

heh