Our teams of talented individuals work with energy and commitment to achieve our clients' goals.

About us

 

Stephenson Harwood is a law firm with over 1300 people worldwide, including more than 200 partners. Our people are committed to achieving the goals of our clients - listed and private companies, institutions and individuals.

We assemble teams of bright thinkers to match our clients' needs and give the right advice from the right person at the right time. Dedicating the highest calibre of legal talent to overcome the most complex issues, we deliver pragmatic, expert advice that is set squarely in the real world.

Our headquarters are in London, with eight offices across Asia, Europe and the Middle East. In addition we have forged close ties with other high quality law firms and an integrated local law capability in Singapore and the PRC. This diverse mix of expertise and culture results in a combination of deep local insight and the capability to provide a seamless international service.

Stephenson Harwood: A year in review, 2023

Key facts and figures

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200+

Partners

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1300+

People worldwide

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49

Top rankings for individuals

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8

Offices worldwide

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26%

Of our people are based in Asia

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40

Languages spoken by our staff

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90+

Countries in which our clients are based

 
 

Our work  

We assemble teams with the right expertise to meet our clients' needs and draw on the highest calibre of talent to overcome the most complex issues.

Particular areas of strength include:

  • Commercial litigation
  • Corporate
  • Employment, pensions and private wealth
  • Finance
  • Marine and international trade
  • Real estate and projects

See all service areas and all sector expertise.

Our clients

We advise a wide range of listed and private companies, institutions and individuals. Our recent client survey demonstrated that clients value our pragmatic, commercial advice.

Our clients include the following:

  • Acadia Healthcare
  • Bowmark Capital
  • BTG plc
  • China Development Bank
  • Circle Holdings plc
  • DVB Bank
  • easyHotel
  • ENGIE
  • Henderson Global Trust plc
  • Hotel Chocolat Group plc
  • Kroll
  • Lavendon Group plc
  • Meggitt plc
  • Samuel Tak Lee
  • Schroder European Real Estate Investment Trust plc
  • Shield Therapeutics plc
  • Transportation Partners
  • Transport UK Group (formerly Abellio) 
  • Tristan Capital
  • TyraTech
  • Vietnam Enterprise Investments Limited

You can find out more about the work we do for our clients by looking at the deals on the services and sectors pages.

Our values

Four deeply held values govern our behaviour and the quality of service we deliver for clients.

Individuality 
Encourage creativity and develop talent.

Commitment
Be the best and deliver the highest standards.

Teamwork
Work together to build close, long-term relationships.

Straight talking
Say what you mean and do what you say.

Belonging, inclusion and diversity

Our vision is to be known as an inclusive and diverse firm, where all our people feel they can be themselves and thrive at work.

Our people are our biggest asset. We want Stephenson Harwood to be a place where colleagues can do their best work in a team that values the unique contributions that they bring.  That is how we unlock our entrepreneurial spirit.

Our strategy
Our strategy focuses on culture, leadership, talent management and recruitment.

Our partnerships
We partner with a range of organisations who help us to create an inclusive workplace. Our partner organisations include Stonewall, The Business Disability Forum, The Valuable 500, Aspiring Solicitors, Rare Recruitment and many more.

Our network groups
Our employee networks are for, and run by, our people. They create a sense of belonging by celebrating diversity, connecting people across the business and working with the community. Colleagues across the business contribute to fostering our inclusive and healthy culture by joining our employee networks:

  • Enable (disability and neurodiversity)
  • Gender equality
  • Mental health and wellbeing
  • Shout (LGBT+)
  • Social mobility
  • SHARED (Stephenson Harwood Advancing Racial and Ethnic Diversity)

Our reports and data
We know that diverse perspectives, combined with an inclusive culture, make us a better law firm. We are committed to creating a workplace where all of our people can thrive. There’s more to do, but we’re proud of our work to increase diversity and gender balance across the firm to date. Understanding and publishing our data supports us to move the dial on diversity.

Find out more.

Belonging, inclusion and diversity news

Stephenson Harwood ranked in top 75 employers in Social Mobility Index 2023

Rania Tadros wins 'Diversity & Inclusion Champion of the Year Award'

Stephenson Harwood receives highest accreditation in UK Government's Disability Confident scheme

Stephenson Harwood hits key ethnicity target ahead of schedule

Stephenson Harwood launches latest in series of people-focused policies

Stephenson Harwood introduces carers policy

Stephenson Harwood reports on its ethnicity action plan

Stephenson Harwood launches benchmark-setting global fertility and pregnancy loss policies

Stephenson Harwood launches women partner target

Stephenson Harwood launches global menopause policy

Stephenson Harwood introduces diversity targets

Stephenson Harwood introduces support for survivors of domestic abuse

Stephenson Harwood and Aspiring Solicitors launch inaugural Black future talent programme

Stephenson Harwood launches transitioning at work policy

Stephenson Harwood signs the Race Fairness Commitment

Stephenson Harwood joins the Valuable 500

Stephenson Harwood launches scholarship and solicitor apprenticeship programmes

 
 
 
 

Our social and environmental impact

We know we have an important role to play in the communities in which we operate, and that we must strive to continually improve our social and environmental performance.

We aim to make our legal skills count by providing pro bono support to social, community and environmental causes, and to support diversity in the legal sector by providing access to opportunities and support for young people who do not have connections in the sector.

Pro bono

Using our legal skills - pro bono

Our lawyers use their skills to give free legal advice, research or representation for a social, community, humanitarian or environmental cause.
More

Widening access to the profession

Our commitment to diversity starts with young people, often long before they would come to work for us.
More

Focused fundraising

Focused fundraising

We focus our fundraising activities on a specific cause that our people care about.
More

Environment

Environment

We work hard to minimise our impact on the environment.
More

Innovation

It's not just the quality of our legal advice that our clients rely on, it's how we work with our clients that helps us stand out from the crowd.

We have an innovation team, dedicated to improving the way that we deliver our services to clients. Supplementing the work undertaken by this team, we have a network of senior lawyers, representing a cross section of our offices and areas of legal specialism, who combine their legal expertise, client insights and innovation know-how to lead projects, and shape solutions.

We focus on problems that our clients face, and look for the most appropriate solutions to those problems. Our experience is that the most effective way to achieve this is through a consolidated approach of process, people and technology.

Process
We look at the way we run specific types of work for our clients, and redesign the processes we follow to ensure that our lawyers are focused on doing the right tasks in the right way. These projects are led by our process improvement team, who are ‘black-belts’ in a highly regarded cross-industry process improvement methodology called lean six sigma.

People
The process work dovetails with our adaptable resourcing approach – including the use of paralegals, flexible pools of legally qualified resource, administrative staff and outsourced document production teams to ensure that the right level of skills and experience are deployed on the right tasks.

Technology
As you would expect from a global firm of our stature, we invest in market leading technologies including:

  • Document automation: technology that accelerates the creation of first draft documents.
  • Collaboration platforms: enabling us to work and share information securely and efficiently with our clients.
  • Artificial Intelligence: increasing the efficiency, and reducing the cost, of the work our lawyers do when reviewing large volumes of documents.
  • On-line transaction management tools: to give clients real-time access to deal status and documents.

We regularly review the technology we use, assessing emerging technology and investing in new software that meets the needs of our clients and our lawyers.

For more information about our innovation work, please contact Paul Orchard.

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© Stephenson Harwood LLP 2016. Any reference to Stephenson Harwood in this document means Stephenson Harwood LLP and/or its affiliated undertakings. Any reference to a partner is used to refer to a member of Stephenson Harwood LLP.