Winner: Berkeley Law

Finalists 2011: Berkeley Law, Boodle Hatfield, Camilla Baldwin, Clarke Willmott, Farrer & Co, McGrigors

Berkeley Law is a Mayfair-based boutique private client law firm that was founded in May 2010 by four partners – Nick Rucker, Alex Ruffel, Glenn Hurstfield and Tim Thornton Jones – and a team of solicitors from Lawrence Graham.

Its goal was to maintain its legacy client base and attract new clients, with a particular focus on emerging markets where much new wealth is being generated.

Around 90% of the clients of the founding partners moved with them to Berkeley Law and since its launch 250 new clients have signed up to the firm, 80% of which are based outside the UK in jurisdictions that include the United Arab Emirates, China, Russia, Columbia, Egypt and India.

In order to handle this extra work, the firm has hired eight new fee earners since its launch. It has established itself as a limited liability company in order to take advantage of the Legal Services Act to develop an incentive scheme that gives all employees a direct share in the business.

The firm is already one of the larger specialist private client firms in London and has been negotiating innovative fee structures for clients, including a retainer with the family office of a Middle Eastern family to manage their non-UK advisory services that has reduced their legal spend by around 40%.

Among the stand-out deals it 
has advised on was the restructuring of the assets of a non-UK resident billionaire and the setting up of his UK family office to provide succession planning and asset protection.

"It is good to see that it is still possible to start up a successful new legal business in this day and age," said one of the judges.