New model law firm gunnercooke has launched a litigation practice with the hire of a six-strong team including four new partners.

The partners include Mike Kenyon, a Hill Dickinson financial crime consultant and former commercial fraud partner at Burton Copeland, and former DLA Piper and Irwin Mitchell partner Sarah Sharpe, who joins the firm from Sinclair Sharpe, which she launched two years ago. Sharpe specialises in corporate crime and regulatory work.

The partner quartet is completed by Gorvins disputes consultant David Joseph, the future president of the Manchester Law Society, and former Cobbetts commercial litigation partner Mark Whittell, who spent 27 years at the firm prior to its takeover by DWF earlier this year.

They will be supported by two additional solicitors – Victoria Greenwood and Victoria Barry – who join from Cobbetts and Hill Dickinson respectively, and will be employed by gunnercooke full time.

Aside from Greenwood and Barry, gunnercooke is a partner-only firm, with additional support coming from a growing bank of legal counsel, who work for the firm on a freelance basis. The firm last year won the Law Firm Innovation Award at the British Legal Awards for its entirely fixed fee-based model.

The team will work alongside ex-Hill Dickinson litigator Helen Rooney, who moved to gunnercooke earlier this year. A spokesperson for the firm said the litigation team would not have one single practice head.

Both Kenyon and Sharpe – who focus on national work – will be based between the firm's Manchester office, and gunnercooke's City base, which launched last year.

Founding partner Darryl Cooke said: "For a long time our clients have been asking us if we could replicate the service approach that we provide in corporate and private equity to litigation. There is a definite market requirement for a fixed price legal product, but at corporate level.

"We do not use time costing, but instead carefully scope all matters and then provide a senior, commercial and strategic approach to all our services. This is done for a fixed fee, which gives clients ultimate transparency and clarity over what it will cost them to get the result they want."

The firm is currently aiming to significantly grow its new London office, after which it will look to expand into Continental Europe.