Weightmans has acquired a new travel insurance team, after a period of strong financial growth and huge increase in aviation and cross-border work.
Specialising in travel-related litigation and claims, the team is led by a trio brought in from Crawford Legal Services and includes Victoria Edwards, a legal director with nearly 20 years’ experience in casualty claims.
The move is the third in a string of similar team acquisitions over the past 18 months and comes after Weightmans’ insurance law practice posted 8% year-on-year fee growth in its last financial year (FY to April 2024).
Kieran Jones, head of insurance and partner at Weightmans LLP, said: “A new government, new regulation, increasing cross-border complexity and ever-more prevalent AI-enabled fraud means both the insurance and travel landscapes are only getting more challenging. It’s essential that advisors to the sector like us respond to that, expanding our areas of specialism and deepening our offering to reflect this ever more nuanced environment.
“Strong financial performance is what enables us to be agile. Being able to acquire new specialisms when the right external opportunities present themselves is essential to evolving our insurance offering, alongside an ongoing focus on nurturing internal talent.”
Alongside the new travel practice, Weightmans brought in a new sport liability insurance team in 2023, headed up by catastrophic injury specialist and partner Philip Tracey.
In mid-2023, the firm also acquired Pierre Thomas Law, a specialist provider of legal advice on international claims and the defence of accident claims throughout Europe.
The series of acquisitions complements the firm’s co-ownership of Insurance Law Global (ILG), a network of insurance law experts across 45 cities in 13 countries, and comes as Weightmans’ income from international briefs surpassed the £8m mark in the last financial year.
Weightmans’ insurance practice consists of 86 partners, and 380+ lawyers, providing legal services across all major insurance lines and classes of business. The team advises more than 200 insurers, reinsurers, brokers and legacy acquirers, as well as 1,500+ blue chip corporates, 350+ local authorities and 45 blue light services on their insurance needs.
