Identifying a specialist need in the recovering commercial property market has prompted two Yorkshire lawyers to launch their own practice. LB & Co — named after its founding partners, Carolyn Lord and Kate Butterfield — will offer specialist advise on complex planning and development policy issues. It will operate from offices at Pool in Wharfedale, Leeds.
“The Yorkshire property sector is certainly gathering pace and as the first stage in the development cycle, planning is instrumental,” stressed Butterfield. “And contrary to the Government’s stated intentions, the system itself is becoming more and more complex.
“It was the combination of these factors which led us to believe that the time is absolutely right to establish a specialist niche firm to support the property industry,” added Butterfield who, in 2010, first became a partner when Wilbraham & Co merged with Cobbetts.
Five years later she moved to Gordons where she successfully developed and grew the planning practice and was made a partner, undertaking and steering through a range of significant retail and housing projects.
Lord studied law in Leeds, where she first met Butterfield and where they both achieved honours in the Law Society’s final examination. After starting her working life in local government she began, in 1989, training at Hammond Suddards — now the international practice of Squire Patton Boggs — and was seconded to work for a national client in preparation for a six month energy-related public inquiry.
“In addition to our individual expertise, during our formative time working together we built a very successful model to help deliver major developments and which we can now draw upon,” Lord explained.
“Our subsequent combined experience of multi-disciplinary working and of diverse projects will enable us to provide the services that clients want in a way that suits their own needs.”
She feels that by taking a hands-on approach, the new practice “can provide a strategic and cost effective service to a range of clients from the development industry and others who need specialist planning advice”
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