Brighton’s oldest law firm, Quality Solicitors Howlett Clarke, has gone into liquidation.
The firm was a grandee of the south coast legal market. Jackie Gillespie, its Managing Partner, was recently appointed President of the Sussex Law Society. Its website – still extant at the time of writing this – proudly boasts of it being ranked as a Leading Firm 2017 in Legal 500 and of its 240 year history. Which ended earlier this week.

Email enquiries went unanswered and no one was picking up the phone. But a spokeswoman for the wider Quality Solicitors group confirmed that Howlett Clarke was in liquidation and clients were being contacted. She had no further information, and the SRA, as usual, said that it was unable to confirm the firm’s status or discuss the matter. But RollOnFriday has been told that the firm recently lost a large number of staff, which can’t have helped the situation.
Unfortunately Howlett Clarke is the second “quality” firm this week to fail to live up to its moniker.
Comments
Contrary to the claim made, it's not "Britain's oldest law firm". That accolade belongs to Thomson Snell & Passmore which was founded in 1570.
Plenty of others pre-date Howlett Clarke: Farrers (1701), Blandy & Blandy (1733) and Freshfields (1743), to name but a few.
Comments
Please note that comments are subject to moderation.