The Law Society service aims to provide firms with all the contacts, tools and information they need to do business internationally, as well as help individuals assess career development opportunities and increase their personal visibility.
About 60 businesses, including more than 20 of the UK’s largest 100 companies, are members of the initiative, which started about six months ago, nationally.
Leeds Legal, the only city-based law sector marketing campaign in the country, was founded two years ago and has since become one of the most successful city agencies utilising European and international trade missions.
It has achieved this with help from its main sponsor, UK Trade and Investment, a government organisation supporting domestic companies doing business abroad and helping foreign enterprises wanting to invest here.
The Leeds Legal campaign, also backed by the city’s major law firms, has driven an ambitious programme of inward and outward international delegation visits, highlighting the city’s law firms to consumers, business people and legal professionals from across Europe, Asia and North America. These have involved more than 20 Leeds law firms and have led to international collaborative projects and referrals.
Representatives of the organisation, have, for example, in the last year or so, hosted delegations from Canada, Dallas, and Milan and visited that North Italian city, plus the Hong Kong and Hangzhou areas of China, the latter location being Leeds’ twin city. They have also undertaken exploratory visits to Dublin and Madrid, with a view to full delegations going to these cities in the future.
Welcoming the Law Society’s initiative, Leeds Legal chairman Alan M. Baker said: “We see the international division as an important complement to our own work, and feedback from our sponsoring firms shows that’s how they see it too.
“The new division will provide members with vital help and guidance when they try to develop contacts abroad and will hopefully mean they spend their time and money productively in this aspect of their business development.
“We estimate that Leeds legal practices earn about £450m in commercial fees each year, and city council figures indicate about 8,000 people are employed in the sector in the area, including around 2,300 solicitors and 600 barristers. It’s therefore a very significant feature of the local economy.
“We know Leeds legal professionals offer a wealth of world-class expertise, high service levels, no nonsense advice and unrivalled value for money. Anything which helps showcase these attributes to the wider world is, in our view, very welcome, and the Law Society’s initiative certainly fits that bill.”
