Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) is refocusing its corporate practice around supporting real estate and litigation clients, in a move that has been described as a "downgrade" of the practice by former partners following its past investment in a raft of heavyweight hires.

The firm's finance and tax practices are also understood to be prioritising work for real estate and litigation clients.

BLP's real estate clients include Tesco, National Grid and Canary Wharf Group, while the firm's litigation clients include Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley and HSBC.

The firm has historically described its corporate, finance, tax, real estate and litigation practices as its "five pillars". However, one partner said there had been "lots of discussion" over how the practices worked together.

A second BLP partner said that the corporate, finance and tax departments were now being used to "facilitate and complement" real estate and litigation. 

"Downgrading three of the five key practice areas is a very significant thing for the firm to do," said one former partner.

Another former partner said it would be "a major departure" if the firm "went back to being a largely real estate firm".

BLP originally built its name for real estate work but has been investing heavily over the past decade in its finance, tax and corporate practices under the leadership of former managing partner and current senior partner Neville Eisenberg.

In 2007, the firm set up a tax practice with the hire of Clifford Chance's (CC) Michael Wistow as head of tax.

Commenting on the hire at the time, Eisenberg said bulking up in tax formed part of the "overall strategy of moving up the food chain and being able to advise on larger corporate transactions." 

Meanwhile, in 2012 BLP hired senior consultant Alan Paul, who joined from Allen & Overy where he was a corporate partner, corporate partner David Barnes, who was previously Linklaters' corporate chief, and finance partner Prashanth Satyadeva from Clifford Chance. The trio all joined the London office.

The same year, it also hired finance partner Steve Clark from Dechert and corporate partner Julian Stanier from Norton Rose for its London office.

Overseas, it hired finance specialist Bob Charlton from DLA Piper to head its Asia group in 2014. Charlton was previously a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer for nearly 10 years.

However, the firm's magic circle corporate veterans Paul and Barnes are now doing less work for the firm.

Paul has worked as a consultant to the firm for two years but 18 months ago became an independent consultant and has been doing more work for other firms and less for BLP.

Since January, Barnes, who joined BLP on a part-time basis as a corporate partner, has also cut back his hours after he was appointed by the University of Law earlier this year as director of client law firms. In April he told Legal Week: "I joined BLP on a four-day per week basis and have now reduced this to two days per week."

The firm has also been hit by a string of departures across its corporate, tax and finance practices among others. BLP announced in June that former corporate chief David Collins would leave the firm after 20 years at the end of October after losing BLP's managing partner election in February to employment head Lisa Mayhew.

In late 2014, tax partner Cathryn Vanderspar and corporate partner Lisa O'Neill departed for Eversheds and McDermott Will & Emery respectively. In 2013, finance head Matthew Kellett left the firm and subsequently joined accounting giant EY in 2014.

The renewed focus on real estate and litigation clients comes after a string of structural reviews in 2013 which came to a head in spring 2014.

These include an independent review of the finance department carried out by Jomati consultant Tony Williams following Kellett's departure. At the end of 2013, executive chairman Robert MacGregor kicked off a strategy review and prior to that in May, the firm also carried out a redundancy programme that saw 58 legal staff and 44 secretarial staff laid off.

The reviews triggered a number of practice shake ups in May 2014. For example, the firm transferred its EU and competition and contentious and non-contentious regulation practices out of corporate into litigation.

A BLP spokesperson said: "BLP does not normally comment on gossip and speculation but on this occasion we want to make it clear both that we continue to offer strong standalone capabilities in corporate, finance, tax, real estate and litigation and dispute resolution and that the firm continued to grow last year with a 6% increase in turnover, 22% increase in profit per equity partner and now has 13 international offices."

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