Thorntons reports 2016-17 growth on the back of investment

Legal firm Thorntons has recorded strong financial results for the year to 31 May 2017, reporting growth in turnover and profit across all areas of the business.

A period of significant investment has seen the 56 partner firm return an overall increase in turnover of 4.5% from £22.8m to £23.9m, while profit is up by 18% from £4.3m to over £5m.

Particular increases in business across practice areas were seen in residential conveyancing (up 20%), business law (up 17%), immigration (up 38%), private client (up 15%), land and rural business (up 11%) and dispute resolution (up 7%).

The firm said it was confident that its commitment to continuously improving the efficiency of its operational processes and investment in service provision would ensure increased profitability in future years.

Since its year end, in September 2017 Thorntons acquired the Fife and Edinburgh firm Pagan Osborne out of administration. It has also recently won a number of awards and is now in The Lawyer list of top 100 UK firms.

Craig Nicol, joint managing partner, commented: "Following a significant period of growth we are now focusing on strengthening our full service offering which in turn benefits both our longstanding and new clients.

"We are proud of our office footprint and our spread of locations, which allow us to deliver advice where clients need it. We’ll continue to develop all our office locations, in particular Edinburgh as we seek new premises in the capital, as well as targeted development across all of our specialist sectors. Our business has continued to grow through the latter part of 2017.”

He added: "Our latest financial results will enable us to continue to invest in our employees and technology as we endeavour to build on the hard work of our teams across the firm."

Thorntons has a network of 13 offices covering Dundee, Angus, Edinburgh, Fife and Perthshire. 
Craig added: “We are still at early stages of integrating the Pagan Osborne business and hope to be able to deliver strength and depth to our new who came when we completed the acquisition.