Harper Macleod, which recently celebrated its 21st anniversary in business, has achieved a 2.5 per cent turnover growth to £14.1m with a net profit of 30.6 per cent this year, the firm announced.

The firm has also claimed to have avoided making any redundancies or reduction in working hours, retaining all of its 241 employees. 

“We’re viewing the past year as an enormous success, any legal firm achieving growth in the current climate is doing well and we are delighted to have come out the other side with our talent pool intact and a genuine increase in market share,” said Chief executive Martin Darroch.

“2.5 per cent growth might not sound like much in a normal year, but as we all know, this was no normal year! Our strategy is one of delivery on our promises to our people and using them to grow market share in areas not affected as badly by the recession.

“Like most other firms we saw a reduction in commercial property and corporate work, but we’ve managed to grow many other practice areas (insurance, litigation, debt recovery, banking, insolvency and licensing.) by over £1.7m in the past 12 months.

“We’ve tendered for new business on average once a week over the past year and have won 48 per cent of work pitched for, which is well above the national average of 14 per cent and has played a major part in securing our current position.”

The firm's chairman, Professor Lorne Crerar said: “The average age of our lawyers is 34, and the average age of our partners is 39 so we’re a young fit operation. We also take great pride in offering equality of status to non-lawyers and have no less than seven partners who come from a non-legal background. I think this adds a different dimension to our team and helps when faced with the challenges we’ve had in the past year.” 


“Our strategy may mean we are technically less profitable than in previous years, but there is no greed culture in our business – retaining people and coming out of this storm in a robust position was our main aim. We’ve increased our headcount by 72 per cent since 2004 and even managed to increase it by a further 3 per cent on last year.

“With our best people still here and many rival firms damaged, the coming year offers us a tremendous opportunity to further grow our share of the Scottish market.”