Walkers Ireland is the Irish arm of a ten-office global law firm that employs 315 lawyers and 825 people worldwide. Walkers’ core focus is structured finance. Headcount in the Irish office is 117 people and the firm says there has been strong growth in the regulatory area and in its corporate services business, Walkers Professional Services. Recent partner lateral hires are Jennifer Fox (investment funds) from Dillon Eustace, Rachel Rodgers (real estate) from Hayes; Susan Battye (employment) from LK Shields and regulatory consultant Niall Esler from Arthur Cox.

As Managing Partner, what are the management issues that top your priority list?

Retention is at the top of our priorities - at Walkers we have attracted and retained the best talent in the market over the last decade.  Competitor firms and agencies continuously pursue our people but so far we have managed quite well and our success on retention has been attributable to a multi-faceted approach, not just a focus on remuneration.  We trust and respect our people and recognise the vital role they play in our culture and strategy. Our people have remained loyal but we are never complacent in this area.

In the past year, what areas of the practice have you strengthened?

While most of our practice areas have grown, we have seen markedly strong growth in both our regulatory area and in our corporate services business, Walkers Professional Services.  In response to the needs of our financial services client base, particularly those involved in Brexit migrations, we have opened an employment law unit, with the hiring of Susan Battye as the lead partner and we expect to see growth in this area next year.  Our funds and capital markets team has experienced further growth again in the last year.

Does salary inflation and necessary tech investment inevitably lead to higher fees for clients?

There is a lot of focus on retention and recruitment, especially in light of new entrants to the market in the last year.  I cannot say it is not a concern but we have always believed that we should remunerate at the top end of the market so perhaps salary inflation has not been the flash point for us that it may be generally in the market.  As a regards fees, as a financial services firm we tend to focus on the delivery of specialised advice.  Our clients are sophisticated purchasers of legal advice; they know how to assess quality and are happy to pay a fair fee for a specialist, responsive and commercial service.

In Association with

A lot of Walkers business is international. How has Brexit uncertainty impacted on your firm’s activity?

While Brexit has created significant uncertainty for many sectors and is a tremendous concern for the broader economy, we have been fortunate enough to focus predominantly on financial services, the one silver lining on the Brexit cloud.  To-date, therefore, Brexit has largely had a positive impact for us but we are, of course, alive to the potential risks for some of our clients.

How would you describe Walkers’ USP in the legal marketplace?

Our global network is extremely strong and is a great source of internal referrals for the Walkers Ireland office.  Our international offices are located in many of the world's leading financial services centres and we are both coordinated and quite relentless in our focus on FS.

What single client deal from 2018 would you single out?

We have had a number of high profile Brexit migration mandates which we are proud to have been associated with.  Outside of these our role in a €210m carbon offsets repack platform for Tramontana and in a £142.5m synthetic SRT transaction for Lloyds are typical of the type of complex cross border transactions that we are involved in.