Addleshaw Booth & Co

Addleshaw Booth & Co traces its roots back to the very first public record of solicitors in the UK – the Law List – published in 1775.

Nicholas Smith founds the firm in 1775, and Samuel Lister Booth is admitted as a solicitor in 1823. The successors of these practices combined over the years to become Booth, Clough & Booth in 1869. Further amalgamations lead to the firm becoming Booth & Co based in Leeds. in c.1936. John William Addleshaw begins legal practice in 1857 and enters partnership with William Warburton in 1873. The firm becomes Addleshaw & Sons in 1904, and then Addleshaw Sons & Latham in 1917 based in Manchester.

Addleshaw Booth & Co was formed in 1997 by a merger between the Leeds-based Booth & Co. and the Manchester-based Addleshaw Sons & Latham.^[1] Addleshaw Booth was a 'heavyweight' in the North of England legal sector, with offices in Leeds and Manchester.^[2] Its local standing, amongst other things, led to the firm's high-profile appointment as the official lawyers to the 2002 Commonwealth Games.^[3]

Addleshaw Booth was the employer of Sally Clark (and also her husband), the solicitor wrongly convicted of murdering her two sons in 1999.^[4]

It was a member of the Norton Rose M5 alliance, which disbanded in 1998.^[5]

However, the firm's small office in London, and its failure to garner City-based clients, led to the tie-up with Theodore Goddard in the spring of 2003 to become Addleshaw Goddard.^[6] Seen by many commentators in the legal sector as a takeover, the majority of the management board of the new firm were made up of Addleshaw Booth & Co's partners.^[7]