Firm Structure

ADL Solicitors was one of the first truly distributed Law Firms allowing for a high degree of flexibility in terms of staff and resources and creating a degree of flexibility not usually available in UK law firms. The structure allows a significant growth of the numbers of fee earners without the usual associated long-term overheads. This allows the firm to match resources of the large firms often acting for counter-parties in cases we undertake.

Consultants who have many years of experience are held on an availability list. They may be starting out in their own practice after many years working for a large city firm, they may be solicitors who are on maternity leave or who have young families who cannot serve the full-time needs of larger firms, they may be overseas lawyers acting as paralegals, the list is extensive. They area able to be brought into the firm at a moments notice. All are qualified lawyers either in the UK or in Europe. In some cases, they have taken a sebattical to obtain experience of law in England, taking that experience back to their country in a few years in order to be more attractive in the job market. They are engaged as consultants on a self-employed basis and “as needed”, although every lawyer is hand selected for each case and as is appropriate to their experience.

For example, when carrying out intellectual property cases , the European IP lawyers are just as experienced as English lawyers as until Brexit, it was a common system and all of the lawyers are experenced in IP issues and able to seamlessly carry out UK IP cases easily. (In fact, most of our IP lawyers are either dual qualified or are directly supersed by a UK qualified advocate, being a solicitor (usually a solicitor advocate with higher rights ) or a barrister.

In most cases, the case will also be overseen by external barrister, often a QC and we are used to working closely with our learned friends at the Bar of England and Wales.

All of our supervising teams are Solicitors with at least 10 years experience and all are well versed in all types of litigation. In fact, Nick Lockett, our IP Partner is an ex-barrister previously having practised in King’s Bench Walk for many years & holds higher advocacy rights and has been awarded a well as and junior councils special certificate for acting (as well as solicitor) in place of junior counsel for a QC using higher rights certification and thereby significantly reducing costs. This attention to detail and high level of oversight may be a reason why he has never lost a count case since becoming a solicitor – yes, he has settled many cases where settlement was appropriate, but where a case has fought at trial, he has never (to date) lost a trial. This attention to detail also has other benefits as, unlike many other firms, ADL Solicitors has never had an insurance claim on its Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) since commencement in 2001 when it was called ADL Legal. (Client Warning: Past Performance is no guarantee of future performance….🙂. )