Cripps

Managing Partner: James Beatton

Senior Partner: Mike Scott

Offices: Tunbridge Wells, London & Horsham

Cripps is one of the country’s leading legal practices serving corporate, real estate and private clients. With offices in Kent and London, the firm offers a dedicated, integrated team of more than 430 people to deliver exceptional service to clients. As a top 100 law firm, Cripps puts its clients at the heart of all its does – solving their problems, championing their ambitions and helping them plan for the future.

Cripps provides a fully integrated offering for high net worth individuals and families, national and international privately-owned businesses, and non-profit organisations. The firm has one of the UK’s largest private client teams helping individuals and families to maximise their assets, making their lives easier by taking the burden out of managing their personal affairs. The firm’s multi-award-winning corporate team supports many of the UK’s most exciting businesses from innovative start-ups to global brands, fulfilling all the legal service needs a business has during its lifecycle. Cripps’ 120-strong team of real estate lawyers cover every aspect of the property lifecycle, working with private and institutional owners/investors, developers, lenders, private equity, landed estates and major occupiers.

Cripps doesn’t just do the right thing by its clients, the firm is committed to doing it the right way. With the best talent and the right balance of technology, creativity and imagination, Cripps aims to make a lasting difference for clients, people, communities and planet.

Principal areas of work

Private client:

Cripps highly skilled private client team supports individuals and their families, both in the UK and abroad, in their personal and professional lives. The team helps clients to protect, grow, share and enjoy their wealth. Trusted for their expertise in high-value complex cases, Cripps’ lawyers are noted for their discretion and integrity. Expertise include: residential property; family law and disputes; supporting the vulnerable; tax advice; wealth structuring; succession planning; wills, trusts and probate.

Corporate:

With decades of experience, Cripps’ award-winning corporate team offers a wealth of knowledge and advice to entrepreneurs and businesses, locally and globally. Whether starting out, expanding or maturing, the team help clients to identify opportunities, explore options and manage risks. Expertise include: banking and finance; commercial contracts; corporate advisory; employment; investment and funds; mergers and acquisitions; restructuring and insolvency.

Dispute resolution:

The firm’s large team of tenacious dispute resolution solicitors work with trust, tact and diplomacy to resolve clients’ disputes as painlessly as possible. The team covers: commercial; employment; family; inheritance; professional negligence; property and shareholder disputes.

Real estate:

Cripps has one of the best known, multi-disciplinary real estate teams in the South East. Its 120-strong team of specialist property lawyers span multiple real estate sectors and disciplines. The team works across retail, leisure, food and drink, creative industries, housing and logistics. With construction, planning, property finance and dispute resolution teams, clients appreciate Cripps’ joined up capabilities. Clients include the UK’s largest institutional investors, landed estates and residential developers as well as high-end luxury retail brands and technology companies.

Sectors:

Over the years, Cripps has built a strong track record in providing legal services in several industry sectors with a focus on real estate; retail, leisure, hospitality; technology; private wealth and ESG. The firm has built a multi-disciplinary team focusing on these sectors, who understands the market trends and the issues clients are facing. Drawing on the experience of lawyers who have spent time working in-house, on secondments and days spent on site, Cripps truly understands the client environment and perspective.

Recruitment:

Cripps lawyers are either home-grown through the firm’s comprehensive training contract programme or join from other high-quality, city, national and regional firms and are complemented by high-quality business support professionals. The firm recruits people from all walks of life, who share its values: to care, imagine, enjoy and achieve. The firm believes strongly that the best ideas come from working with each other, not for each other regardless of seniority.

At Cripps, we put people at the heart of what we do – our clients, our colleagues and the people in our communities. Together, our purpose is to be the difference. This means using our collective energy, empathy and expertise to make a positive and long-lasting impact on people’s lives and businesses. We realise that actions are more important than words and we make our purpose a reality by channelling our actions through four key ‘pillars’– our people, clients, planet and community.

Diversity

We embrace diversity, celebrating the different backgrounds and experiences our people bring to work. Understanding that the best ideas come from working with each other, not for each other.

We have active programmes around encouraging and nurturing diversity and inclusion, and have had a longstanding track record on ensuring equality. We treat everyone we work alongside with dignity and respect and our policies on harassment, maternity and paternity leave, help uphold the importance of equality and inclusion in our culture.

The diversity of our team makes us more capable, responsive and, above all, human. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer – our diversity enables us to better serve our clients and to create better solutions for them.

We are fully committed to fostering a truly diverse business that reflects the community and society we inhabit. To underline this commitment, we have signed the Law Society’s Charter on Diversity , which promotes diversity and equality across the entire legal profession.

Read our 2023/24 gender pay gap report.

Protecting the planet

We’re committed to protecting the most valuable resource we have: this remarkable planet we’re all fortunate enough to inhabit. As part of this effort, we’re working towards becoming a net zero business to help build a more sustainable future.

We have an independent assessment and audit of our energy usage, industrial process and travel expenses under the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) and report on our energy consumption and associated greenhouse emissions under the SECR regulations. Each year our energy consumption continues to decrease as we introduce new initiatives. Find out more about our environmental initiatives .

In the community

It’s our greatest privilege to use our skills and resources to help support the communities within which we live and work and share our good fortune. We want our actions to have a positive impact on our communities and contribute to causes that matter to our business and our people. Each year, our people support a range of initiatives designed to give back to our communities – from supporting our Charity of the Year, to pro bono work and volunteering for worthwhile causes on our ‘be the difference days’. Find out more about how we make a difference in our communities.