Business services chief Niall Baker talks to Alex Newman about expanding into high-value corporate work

"So I imagine you'll want to talk about Google, the Manchester team that left for TLT and the firm's corporate profile," suggests the head of Irwin Mitchell's business legal services (BLS) division, Niall Baker, on sitting down with Legal Week recently. "One of the first skills good lawyers learn is how to read upside down," he adds after a brief pause, nodding at the top three lines of my notepad.

There's a smile creeping across his face, which is wrapped in a month-old beard, grown – so Baker says – to annoy his boss, the firm's group chief executive, John Pickering. It's a decent ice-breaker but an acknowledgement of a rather sensitive issue for Irwin Mitchell. A week before our conversation last month, the firm was identified as having been de-listed by Google, apparently for falling foul of search engine optimisation rules in its links to personal injury-related stories.

It is also a bit of a quandary for Baker, given that part of his role as head of the BLS division is to raise Irwin Mitchell's corporate profile, which, at last count, represented almost a third of the firm's £200m annual turnover – a figure that means it brought in just under half as much as the personal legal services (PLS) arm Irwin Mitchell has traditionally been synonymous with. Considering the firm's size, it is fair to assume that clients' ability to locate the website was not something Baker thought he would ever have to worry about.

On Google, he offers no further comment, beyond reiterating the official line that the firm is aware of the situation and "working closely with its digital agency to deal with the problem". But given Irwin Mitchell – which became one of the first large UK law firms to apply for an alternative business structure licence in January 2012 – is looking to build its profile as a full-service corporate law firm, the penalty is perhaps a somewhat ironic reminder of the kind of work it is more renowned for.

The other recent headache for Baker has been the departure of a 30-strong Manchester team – including six partners – to TLT in November, all of whom were based in the BLS division. But the ebullient Baker, who has spent his entire legal career at the firm, is philosophical about the team's exit. "People have to believe in the project for it to succeed," he says. "We have lost some turnover, but the loss of the team won't hurt us in the long run; we think we are in a better position now." 

In fact, on balance, the direction of lateral traffic has been heading Irwin Mitchell's way over the last two years. The January signings of Pinsent Masons' Phil Berwick and DWF's Nick Dawson took the total number of new partners in the BLS group to 20 over the period – a clear demonstration that Baker's vision for the team is being acknowledged by certain corners of the market.

Baker's vision is a strategy that plays to Irwin Mitchell's strengths in terms of office spread, support staff and opportunities to cross-sell with PLS clients. Furthermore, Baker sees this focus as a direct and meaningful response to the current state and recent history of the legal services market. 

"I think a lot of firms expect rates to eventually go back to the way they were before 2008, but I am convinced this isn't going to happen," he argues, stating that Irwin Mitchell is better placed than most to accommodate the new normal. "One of the factors that makes us competitive is our leverage between offices and partners."

The proposition – that the firm's cheaper regional offices can serve as a support service on some of the higher-end transactional and advisory mandates – is convincing, if you accept the assertion that clients do not mind where work is done, so long as it is done well. 

And while Baker dislikes City-centric terms such as near-shoring or north-shoring, he acknowledges that if the BLS department is to seize opportunities in the capital the firm needs to draw on the regional strengths and shape of Irwin Mitchell as a whole.

With firms such as Allen & Overy, Ashurst and Herbert Smith Freehills making retroactive moves into lower-cost national support bases, Irwin Mitchell is one of a handful of firms that could even lay claim to doing this the right way around. 

The firm's London base – which is home to the firm's heads of commercial litigation, banking and finance and employment and pensions – has already exposed the firm to the kind of international work it did not see five years ago.

"Although we are very much a national UK firm and that remains our prime focus, in London in particular we are gaining opportunities to work on the sort of business we would not have seen five years ago," adds Baker, who says that at least 50% of the work carried out by the office's corporate, real estate, litigation and fraud practices has an international or cross-border element.

Following the firm's 2013 exit from Malaga and Madrid, the BLS division does not have its eyes on global expansion. But then with such a steady focus on the domestic market, it is perhaps a distraction that Baker and his team do not need.