Travers Smith

Travers Smith is a law firm which excels in corporate work, but in a fashion different from many law firms in the City. Rather than chasing scale and international deals, Travers has maintained a laser focus on UK corporate work, and has maintained healthy financials doing so. It combines this expertise with advisory sub-specialisms to support its UK corporate clientele and (somewhat surprisingly) a market-leading AI group. Travers Smith’s core business is in the UK corporate space. The firm’s corporate practices reflect about half of its overall headcount and an even greater proportion of its revenue. It has developed market leading practices in what are the traditionally particularly fruitful domains: private equity, funds, and UK M&A. The firm was one of the first English outfits to fully embrace private equity, first assembling a leading team in the mid-1990s. Its contemporary offering, formerly led by now managing partner Edmund Reed, has an impressive client list, advising such UK PE staples as CVC Capital and Graphite Capital. This is complemented by a very well-regarded funds team, with Head of Funds Jeremy Elmore particularly well known for his fundraising wizardry, and the top-performing UK mid-market M&A practice by total deal volume. It has maintained healthy financials doing so, growing PEP to £1.3 million over the course of the past financial year. The firm has managed this despite fairly modest revenues, broadly due to their conservative approach to expenses, investment and partnership appointments. Nowhere is this more obvious than in respect of the firm’s international approach (or lack thereof). The firm has no international presence, other than its tiny, English-law-only Paris office, and has kept its equity ranks small. The firm has also generally avoided non-corporate laterals. Whilst this lean and focused approach has served Travers Smith well, there are signs further growth could be at hand. Over the last few years, it has lost a small but near-constant stream of corporate partners to US firms. This may not be regarded as a prima facie show of strength, but it does evidence a firm which produces desirable partner-level talent in highly profitable, competitive sub-specialisms. Rumours internally suggest that the new management team may seek to increase rates in these areas accordingly. In addition to its UK-focused dealmaking work, Travers Smith has developed a truly impressive raft of advisory practices. The idea is to provide those ancillary areas which its transactional clients will often also require. Highlights include the firm’s Band-1 ranked Pensions team (particularly well known for its diversity work) and its financial regulation practice. Further, somewhat surprisingly for what is generally considered a fairly traditional firm, Travers Smith has incubated a leading law and AI group. Recently spun-off as a separate entity, the group is especially notable for its leading work in the chatbot space. Judging by the aforementioned spin-off, it appears that Travers Smith has plans to license those chatbot innovations at some point in the future. Maybe an old dog can learn new tricks.