Irwin Mitchell is aiming to "attack the private client area" to drive growth following its merger with Thomas Eggar, according to Irwin Mitchell regional managing partner, and former Thomas Eggar managing partner, Victoria Brackett.

Three months on from the merger and Brackett and Irwin Mitchell chief executive Andrew Tucker are starting to flesh out their plans for the combined firm to boost its revenue of around £210m still further.

Growing the combined firm's private client practice is central to their strategy and according the Tucker and Brackett, part of the rationale for the deal. Brackett says, prior to the merger, "both firms had produced remarkably similar strategies to attack the private client area".

Thomas Eggar has traditionally been strong in the private client area, while for Irwin Mitchell it is a relatively new part of its offering, added when it acquired Mayfair-based private wealth boutique Berkeley Law in 2014. The deal gave it access to a roster of high net worth clients.

Tucker says: "We are putting together the two businesses, Berkeley Law which has a stronger international focus, and Thomas Eggar which has a larger UK private client business."

"We are developing our strategy to build those two sectors through further investment in the immediate future," he adds.

Brackett says that the merger with Irwin Mitchell has also expanded Thomas Eggar's "armoury" in the private client sphere, adding to its ability to advise clients on issue such as pensions and immigration, thanks to Irwin Mitchells' capabilities in these areas.

She adds that the firm is targeting entrepreneurs with fast growing businesses where it can sell its private client work and its business services work, often using the former as a way into the later. "That intersection between business services and private services is a really strong selling point of the business – and I think that entrepreneurial space has a lot of opportunity for us," she says.

The firm is also looking to grow its personal injury (PI) business in South East England, by taking advantage of Thomas Eggar's five offices across the region.

"We know from past experience of opening offices around the UK that we will increase our [personal injury] market share if we have people servicing the market locally," says Tucker.

While the plans for how to do this are still being formulated, Tucker says that options include recruiting people, using existing Thomas Eggar staff or moving legacy Irwin Mitchell staff into the Thomas Eggar offices.

Another option for expanding this side of the business touted by those in the market would be to pick up lawyers, a team or maybe whole businesses from financially troubled rival Slater & Gordon. In February the Australian firm announced plans to cut back its UK network of offices as it racked up a global after-tax loss of A$958.3m (£493m).

But Tucker declines to answer questions about whether Irwin Mitchell would make a move to absorb any of Slater and Gordon's UK operations. "We don't talk publicly about our competitors," he says.

How much growth the firm can achieve from all, or any, of these steps is unclear. Tucker declines to put a figure on what he thinks the firm is capable of delivering, which will make it difficult to judge if his plans have been a success.

Work in progress

All of these plans will, however, have to wait while the two firms go through the process of integration which Tucker says is a "work in progress".

As part of this process the firm has set up an integration committee, consisting of Brackett, a project manager, the CEO of the business legal services (BLS) division, Niall Baker, and the CEO of the personal legal services (PLS) division, Craig Marshall.

Brackett has also joined the firm's executive board, alongside Tucker, CFO Andrew Merrick, Baker and chief executive of corporate and commercial litigation Mark Higgins from the BLS side of the firm, and Marshall and managing partner of Irwin Mitchell's person injury division, Stuart Henderson, from the PLS side of the firm.

When asked about possible redundancies, particularly among business support staff, as a result of the integration Tucker says: "We don't talk publicly about any of those issues, the right thing to do is to have the conversation and make the decision and talk to people who are concerned about it first."

He adds: "We'll let the people know in the business before we let the press know."

Brackett says that there has been a deliberate policy of not replacing staff at Irwin Mitchell in the run up to the merger, with the hope that Thomas Eggar staff will be able to fill the gaps.

There are no plans to cut lawyer numbers and Brackett says that all 21 Thomas Eggar equity partners joined the equity at Irwin Mitchell, while its salaried partner ranks joined the firm as fixed share partners.

The integration changes are due to complete before 1 May.

It is understandable that the firm is taking its time to get the structure and systems right. The stakes are high as it bets heavily on being able to cross-sell its business services to its substantial book of private clients.