Trio of partner promotions at Brabners

Independent legal practice Brabners has promoted three of its senior associates to partner across its corporate, family and private client teams.

David McGurnaghan is a private client lawyer with more than 10 years’ experience. He specialises in wills, estates and tax planning for high net-worth individuals, trusts and owner-managed businesses, and has significant expertise in power of attorney and Court of Protection work. David will work closely with Duncan Bailey, head of the private client department, which was named Private Client Team of the Year at the Liverpool Legal Awards 2017, to drive the future growth of the team.

Joanne Radcliff, who was a finalist in the Lawyer of the Year category at the Made in Manchester Awards 2018, is a specialist in family law and has considerable experience in complex and high value financial settlements. She supports clients with separation, divorce, civil partnerships, prenuptial agreements and issues relating to cohabitation and child matters. Joanne is also a trained collaborative legal practitioner, which offers an alternative method of dispute resolution to her clients.

Nikki Whittle, who was recently named Lawyer of the Year at the North West Business Insider Young Professional Awards, is a corporate lawyer who also leads the firm’s corporate team in Preston. She supports a broad range of clients, from SMEs to large corporates, with transactions including M&A, MBOs, JVs and retirement sales. She also deals with non-contentious and contentious insolvency matters.

Alongside these partner promotions, Brabners has also confirmed that its current cohort of seven second year trainees will all remain with the firm as newly-qualified solicitors in September – they are Will Eggleston (commercial), Adrian Horne (employment), Russell Kaminski (private client), Elke Kendall (litigation), Joshua Oxley (litigation), Alexander Thow (corporate) and Felicity Wimbush (planning and environmental).

Nik White, managing partner at Brabners, said: “Making sure we invest in the brightest talent is a vital part of our long-term growth strategy. Attracting quality lateral hires to the firm is a key part of that, as is ensuring that we nurture and promote the talent, ambition and success of the many great commercially-minded people already in our business. This latest round of promotions is testament to that and I’m also delighted that we are retaining 100 per cent of our second-year trainees on qualification. This reflects the quality of the young people we are bringing on board and also our positive growth mindset, all of which will help us to drive the firm forward into our next phase of growth.”

These promotions follow a period of investment in talent at the firm, which has recently announced the senior hires of corporate partner Jon Close, financial litigation partner Phil Sheard and his team, in addition to Lisa Robinson-Behnejad as director of marketing and business development and Ruj Dev as head of commercial finance and project management.