Jackson Lees Group scooped the law firm of the year accolade for those with more than 50 employees at the Liverpool Law Society’s 2024 Legal Awards.

The awards celebrate the firms and individuals who have made a significant contribution to Liverpool and surrounding areas, including by retaining local talent and supporting the community through charity initiatives and pro bono work.

Winners were announced at Liverpool Law Society’s annual dinner at the Rum Warehouse at Liverpool’s Titanic Hotel.

Jackson Lees Group is a full-service firm which works with private and legal aid clients across the north west and beyond, with offices in Liverpool, Wirral and Southport.

It comprises the practices of Broudie Jackson Canter, Farrington Law and Jackson Lees.

Broudie Jackson Canter has a long history of helping individuals and groups to obtain access to justice, and the pro bono work of its team was instrumental in getting former prime minister Boris Johnson to agree to a statutory public inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The firm is now supporting Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK at the inquiry and has implemented various channels of communication to ensure clients are kept up-to-date with the proceedings and connected to their legal team, including through regular webinars and podcasts.

Broudie Jackson Canter has also played a key role in the campaign for the Hillsborough Law, which will create a duty of candour on public authorities to help reduce injustices and provide parity of representation. It will mean that officials or organisations which mislead or obstruct investigations could face criminal sanctions.

Elkan Abrahamson, a Broudie Jackson Canter director and its head of major inquests and inquiries team, has successfully campaigned on a pro bono basis alongside the bereaved families of the Hillsborough Disaster for inquests to be conducted.

Jackson Lees Group has also implemented a range of initiatives across the group to improve the client experience, including trialling AI tools and launching a new customer experience platform.

It provides opportunities for personal and professional development through its learning academy, and arranges external speakers on topics such as mental health.
In addition, the group has a strong policy of recruiting and retaining local talent. It holds recruitment events for local graduates and is launching a drive to promote careers in law to schoolchildren from schoolchildren from disadvantaged and from black and minority ethnic communities.

The law firm of the year award is the latest accolade for the group. In early 2024, Jackson Lees Group won a Feefo Gold Trusted Service Award for excellent client experience for the second year in a row.

Esther Leach, managing director of Jackson Lees Group, said:

“We are committed to making a positive difference to our clients, our people and to our communities, and we are absolutely thrilled to have won this fabulous award.

“Our brilliant people are absolutely outstanding at what they do. They consistently go above and beyond to get the best for our clients, and so to be publicly recognised in this way is fantastic.”

More than 400 people attended the black-tie awards dinner. The guest speaker was Baroness Hale of Richmond, a former president of the Supreme Court. Other speakers included the society’s president Gaynor Williams and vice-president James Mannouch.

Haley Farrell, deputy managing director of Jackson Lees Group, said:

“Winning this award is a great honour for all of us at the group, and we are extremely proud of our people.

“The legal talent across the Merseyside region is astounding, and we were nominated alongside other fantastic firms. We congratulate everyone who won an award and was shortlisted.”

Jackson Lees Group is part of MAPD Group, which was founded by Brian Cullen and Joanna Kingston-Davies in 2020 to power the growth of local law firms nationally through acquisition. The initials stand for Making a Positive Difference.