Manchester-based Cobbetts – which has some 240 lawyers, 74 partners and offices in London, Birmingham and Leeds – said it was calling in administrators owing to difficult trading conditions in the professional services sector’.

Looking for a buyer

According to a report in The Lawyer newspaper, the firm issued a statement saying it would ‘obtain the protection of an interim statutory moratorium to enable a sale of the business and assets of the firm to be concluded in a short time frame’. The firm went on to say that it was working closely England’s Solicitors Regulation Authority and ‘with all stakeholders and our professional advisers to achieve the best outcome for creditors, clients, employees and members’.
Cobbetts is ranked 61st in The Lawyer’s current top-200 UK law firm league table, with an annual turnover listed at £45.4 million and profit-per-partner rated at £323,000. In its assessment of the firm for its rankings report, the newspaper highlighted failed merger talks with English regional and Scottish law firm DWF. The report also noted that Cobbetts had been on a cost-cutting exercise, having made redundancies and embarking on a hunt for cheaper office space.

Rocketing debts

London-based weekly, the Law Gazette, reported that the firm’s most recent limited liability partnership accounts showed operating profit falling from £11m to £10.6m, and importantly, that bank loans and overdrafts due within a year rocketing from slightly less than £600,000 to £2.7m.
Nonetheless, says the newspaper, as recently as last month, senior Cobbetts partners described the firm’s half-yearly results as showing a ‘steady ship’. It quoted managing partner Nick Carr as forecasting trading conditions for the forthcoming six months were ‘strong’.

Plodders

The firm’s demise comes two and a half years after fellow Manchester practice Halliwells went spectacularly bust – a point not lost on commentators on The Lawyer’s web site. ‘Whilst few will meet this with the warm glow of schadenfreude which greeted the demise of Halliwells,’ wrote one, ‘my experience is that whilst the firm had some good people, it also had more than its fair share of dull, uninspiring plodders -- and in this market that is not going to be enough to see you prosper.’
Another commentator adopted the line many recited after last year’s demise of New York-based global practice Dewey & LeBoeuf went down last year: ‘Farewell Cobbetts! Who is next?’