Date posted:
Fri 01 July 2022
The new office, situated in Rotterdam House on the banks of the River Tyne, by the landmark Gateshead Millennium Bridge, marks the firm’s sixth UK office and its tenth office location overall. It joins offices in Liverpool, Manchester, London (City and St James’s) and Leeds in the UK, and Hong Kong, Singapore, Monaco and Greece internationally.
The opening of a new office supports a period of sustained growth over the past five years, in particular for the firm’s Health Business Group.
It also builds on the success of Hill Dickinson’s Leeds office, which opened in 2017 with a team of three people and has since grown to 32, having expanded its original healthcare offering to include corporate and real estate teams.
Andrea Proudlock joins Hill Dickinson from DAC Beachcroft as a partner in the Health team and head of office for Newcastle. She leads a newly recruited team that currently numbers seven but is set to grow significantly over the next 12 months.
Also joining the team in Newcastle are Richard Hartis, senior associate in health real estate who joins from DAC Beachcroft and Sophie Robertson, a commercial health associate from Hempsons.
Speaking on the firm’s choice of Newcastle as the location for its new office, Andrew Craggs, head of the firm’s Health Business Group, said: “Opening an office in Newcastle was always the next step in our national growth strategy, representing a natural extension of our offering to our clients and a key element in the growth of our Health team. I am delighted to welcome Andrea and her team to Hill Dickinson.
“We already have a significant number of clients in and around Newcastle and the North East who we know will welcome having access to our legal teams locally. Naturally, we also see significant potential for further growth and aim to establish a service offering in time that spans all three of our main business groups; health, business services and marine.”
Hill Dickinson chief executive Peter Jackson added: “I am very pleased to see our five-year strategic growth plan come to fruition with the opening of our sixth UK office. As with our Leeds office in 2017, we see Newcastle as a natural base from which to serve our growing North of England client base across all areas of our firm, starting with Health.
“The fact that we already have an established client base in the North East makes this a logical next step, aligned with our commitment to building strong national teams that have a local presence. It helps, of course, that Newcastle is a thriving city with a wealth of top-tier legal talent from which we have recruited an exceptional team for the new office. We are very much looking forward to meeting and building local relationships with our clients over the coming weeks and months.”
Hill Dickinson’s Health Business Group now numbers 240 health lawyers working across five UK offices. Originally based solely in the North West, the firm’s national strategy led to the opening of health sector offices in London in 2016 and Leeds in 2017 to expand the firm’s footprint and better serve key clients locally.
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…/Page 2 The Newcastle offering initially consists of Health Real Estate, Health Commercial and Primary Care services, with national back up on all other aspects of the firm’s Healthcare offering