Birmingham's status as the home of the superset was emphasised towards the end of last year when 5 Fountain Court, one of its two largest sets, burst the 100-member barrier.

At the same time Birmingham's other superset St Philip's Chambers – just a few members short of 100 – has moved into new multimillion-pound offices, which any law firm would be proud to inhabit. It could be argued that the superset model might provide lessons beyond Spaghetti Junction.

Formed from the 1998 merger of 7 Fountain Court and Priory Court Chambers, St Philip's has 94 members spread across six practice areas: chancery/commercial; criminal; employment; family; personal injury and clinical negligence; and property, planning and public law.

But Vincent Denham, its chief executive, is quick to refute the idea that breadth of coverage leads to thin quality.

He says: "This is not a pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap operation. We might be regarded as a one-stop shop, but Harrods has several departments where you can buy different goods in the same place and this does not mean you cannot buy quality."

Denham, a former director of franchising
at the Legal Aid Board, arrived in Birmingham two years ago and will be leaving soon to take up a similar role at London solicitors Radcliffes. He sees competition from London as the main impetus for creating a regional heavyweight as a way of keeping work in the city.

He says: "In London there is not a lot to chose between sets in terms of skills. Whereas in Birmingham, there are good performers at all the sets, others say that St Philip's and 5 Fountain Court have become centres of excellence that can attract people because of our structure and the way we work."

At both sets there is recognition that a formalised administrative structure is required to run chambers of such a large scale. At St Philip's, members have formed a management company that runs the business.

The set is run firmly on business lines – there is not just a vague constitution and the omnipotent power of a chambers' head so often found at other sets. The administration is headed by a board of directors, comprising head of chambers Rex Tedd QC, two deputy heads, the six leaders of the set's practice groups and five others, including Denham.

Day-to-day matters are run by a core committee consisting of Denham and barrister
representatives including the set's treasurer Douglas Readings.

Similar structures are in place at 5 Fountain Court, where a board of directors, each with responsibility for an aspect of management, sits above its six practice groups.

Denham believes size inevitably brings with it the ability to achieve economies of scale, which can attract good barristers to join. St Philip's has a low average overhead charge of 14%. At 5 Fountain Court it is 15%.

To Tony McDaid, 5 Fountain Court's long-serving senior clerk and practice director, being a superset is all about achieving the scale to offer better services to tenants.

He is in the middle of a recruitment campaign to attract talent, and sees that approach as preferable to achieving size through a merger.
He says: "We have looked at merging for
several years. But mergers do not give you any quality control."

Whichever way a superset is constructed, whether through merger as at St Philip's or 5 Fountain Court's organic growth, with the implementation of specialist practice groups, management boards, marketing strategies and multimillion-pound office blocks, the supersets resemble the law firms that they are seeking to serve.

Behind each of these initiatives is the aim
of keeping work generated in the city from travelling to London – especially from Birmingham's big firms such as Wragge & Co, Eversheds, Pinsent Curtis and Hammond Suddards Edge.

Last summer St Philip's formed a major litigation group of five, led by John Randall QC and James Corbett QC, within the 26-strong chancery/commercial group.
In July, Legal Week reported that Birmingham heavyweight Wragges forced St Philip's hand by threatening to take the £1.3m it spent locally in-house unless services were reorganised to service it better.

St Philip's rejects this version of events, although it admits to having discussed its plans with Wragges.

According to Lance Ashworth, a member of the major litigation group, it was all down to perception and showing Birmingham's big players that the set had the in-depth strength to handle high-quality work and a recognition that the needs of the city's big firms were different from those of the smaller firms.

He says: "They were worried about back-up if they could not get the people they wanted at the time they wanted them. There was a perception that there was not sufficient strength in depth, but this is perception rather than reality."

The idea behind the new team is to demonstrate this strength, by working as a team rather than individuals, with the hope that work will also trickle down to other members of the set's chancery/commercial division.
This aping of law firm structures also extends to its new building, a £3m city centre office that was the regional headquarters of the Bank of England.

It resembles a solicitors' office more than a traditional barristers' chambers.

"We are approaching our market in much the same way a law firm does, by trying to create the facilities that solicitors find in their own environments," Denham says.

5 Fountain Court has no designs to move premises, but along with St Philip's, it is part of a new initiative that closely resembles life at a law firm. The two chambers are becoming part of a new panel of recommended chambers for insurance firm AXA. Solicitor insurance panels have long been in existence, but barristers panels are rare.

McDaid believes this development could bolster 5 Fountain Court's superset status even further. He says: "Able barristers will have to join an approved set on the list to get work."

He believes the pace of consolidation will quicken further if more insurance companies follow AXA's lead.
Both sets agree such moves are blurring the lines between the two branches of the profession. Denham says that in time, his chambers could be considered to be a legal services provider of arbitration, mediation and litigation work, rather than a barristers' chambers.

Ashworth adds: "We want to take the best
traditions of the Bar: independence, freedom of thought and combine it with the best aspects of modern business practice – quick decision-making and marketing aimed at what the market wants."

He even believes that chambers might become partnerships in future if the problem of barristers in the same chambers being able to appear against each other could be overcome.

McDaid is surprised that no big firms have yet snapped up a set to create an advocacy unit, but both sets believe that higher costs will rule out serious competition from solicitor-advocates.

Whatever the future, the two Birmingham supersets see their priority in making sure they get the work in their region rather than competing with London chambers for London work. This view appears not to be reciprocated.

McDaid says: "London has always had a strong presence in Birmingham, but we are not going out to attract work in London. There is a lot of that to be found in the city."

They may not be going after the capital's work, but 5 Fountain Court is definitely keen to attract London counsel.

Its recent recruitment campaign has seen two respected senior barristers and commercial fraud specialists, Ian Alexander QC of Clarendon Chambers and senior junior Graham Henson from Furnival Chambers, move to the Midlands, and McDaid says the set gets an increasing number of applications from London.

"A lot of people are running away from London," Henson claims. "Some feel that legal aid and the amount of work generally are being squeezed in London. They think life is going to be easier in the provinces. Young London barristers are either contemplating a move or leaving the London Bar in droves."

So will the idea of the superset find currency elsewhere? Opinion seems uniform on this point. It might not translate to the capital, but it could prove attractive in the regions.

Mark Green, the author of the BDO Stoy Hayward annual survey of the Bar, doubts it would be successful in London.

"In provincial centres, such as Birmingham, you are more likely to have solicitors' firms that have a wide sweep of departments covering common and commercial work that is suitable for such large multi-disciplinary chambers," he says.

But in London he argues tensions between commercial and common law practice groups are more likely to result in splits rather than greater agglomerations.

McDaid agrees that intense competition and logistics, such as finding large enough premises, would mitigate against supersets down South.

But outside London he believes the Birmingham model is being pursued, citing in particular the current Leeds merger of 10 Park Square and 9 Woodhouse Square, which will create the city's largest set: 65-member Zenith Chambers. 10 Park Square's senior clerk Robin Butchard was previously a senior clerk at St Philip's.

McDaid notes: "Concerning what is happening in Leeds it may be no coincidence that Robin Butchard is involved. He was previously at St Philip's, which we believe followed our blueprint." Furthermore, McDaid has had several enquiries from chambers around the country about the logistics of setting up a superset.

"Presumably, other sets believe that ours is a model that can be adopted elsewhere," he says.