Wollen Michelmore Exeter Launch Party

News Desk
Authored by News Desk
Posted Monday, July 23, 2018 - 8:38am

FAST-growing and well-known law firm Wollen Michelmore have been given a ‘warm welcome’ to the city of Exeter.

It came from Karime Hassan, Exeter City Council’s chief executive and growth director, as Wollen Michelmore officially celebrated their latest expansion and move into the city with a special sun-soaked reception at Exeter Cathedral’s Chapter House and Cloister Gardens.

The event was to mark the company’s recent merger with Exeter-based solicitors Morgan and Pope.

Mr Hassan told more than 120 guests that Wollen Michelmore had joined one of the most successful and fastest growing cities in the country.

He also revealed that more and more people were actually moving back to live in the high street so Wollen Michelmore’s decision to  merge with Cathedral Yard-based Morgan and Pope was perfectly timed.

“Welcome to the city of Exeter. We wish you every success in the future”, he said.

The merger is a significant step in Wollen Michelmore’s 150-year history. It will now have offices in Exeter as well as Torquay, Barnstaple, Dartmouth and Newton Abbot. The company has seen rapid growth especially in the past 12 years and will now emploly 150 people, including 14 partners, with a turnover of almost £8million.  The merger makes it the fifth biggest law firm in the Devon and Somerset region.

Chief executive Chris Hart told the launch reception, which included leading figures in the local business fraternity: “We felt the time was right for us to be represented in Exeter.

“Notwithstanding growth, our core values, including offering a great service, every client, every time, remain the same and it was the ability to maintain those core values that attracted us to Morgan and Pope. They also have great people and we got to know them well over the couple of years that we were talking about this.”

Charlotte McGregor Charlotte McGregor, a former Morgan and Pope Partner and now a Partner with and key member of the Wollen Michelmore team at Exeter, also told the VIP guests that they started to talk about growth three years ago and that included a conversation with Chris Hart and WM practice director Clive Meredith.

Charlotte said: “I can honestly say that within the first 10 minutes of that conversation we knew that these were the people we wanted to join forces with. They were entirely normal and yet passionate about offering great legal services to the client.”

She added: “It was obvious to us that Wollen Michelmore had integrity throughout and that their ethos was one which matched our own. They held and we now hold clients at the heart of everything we do and, just as importantly, they considered themselves to be one large work based family.

“With all this change though, it’s wonderful to be able to say that we have the same great group of lawyers in Exeter and so it’s business as usual but with the added bonus of having a greater range of legal services on offer.”

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