Meet The Directors
Steve Battarbee - Commercial Director
Steve is Senior Partner at KBK Law a two office two partner general high street practice based on Merseyside.
Steve was admitted in 1989 after training at Chester College of Law and his legal career started is in criminal law at Liverpool based firm Silverman and Livermore before joining David Phillips and Partners to undertake both family and civil litigation.
In 1987 he joined Sefton firm Kennan Bell and Co. leaving that practice in 1994 along with Partner Mike Kennan to take over another Liverpool firm Benjamin Kay and Co. which became KBK Law.
Steve became a member of the Law Society’s Personal Injury Panel in 1999
Steve initiated the formation of the North West Solicitors Association an organisation now comprising of 19 Merseyside practices 2006 in response to the perceived threat that conveyancing practices faced from the introduction of HIPs.
Concerned that a market capture exercise by the financial services industry and panel managers would occur to capitalise on the public’s confusion about HIPs he persuaded other local practices to work together to offer the public locally a trusted organisation from which they could source their HIPs. NWSA went on to market together and to streamline local conveyancing through agreed protocols.
Steve remains Chairman of the North West Solicitors Association.
Fearing an even bigger threat to high street legal practices, he together with fellow Director Tracy Thompson, formed Nationwide Solicitors Alliance Limited to create a platform and support network for small and medium sized law firms to face up to these challenges.
Contact : steve@solicitorsalliance.co.uk
Tracy Thompson - Managing Director
Tracy is Managing Director of Nationwide Solicitors Alliance Ltd and a Licensed Conveyancer at Morecrofts LLP, a medium sized multi disciplinary twelve partner practice based in Liverpool city centre and three other high street locations in Merseyside and Wirral.
Tracy commenced her legal career at Eversheds and then joined high volume practice Scott Rees in Lancashire. As vice chair of the North West Solicitors Association she was heavily involved in the development and growth of that organisation and believes passionately that law firms should be co-operating not only with other law firms but with fellow property professionals in order to retain local property markets and the benefit that brings to local economies.
She believes that a demand for a personal conveyancing service will remain attractive to large sections of the public and estate agents provided they can be developed and marketed effectively.
Tracy says “although panel managers and high volume firms market their services very well the public do not always benefit from their economies of scale and with a few exceptions neither the public nor their estate agents receive the personal service that they would like.
I believe that there is still a place for the high street practitioner but we must fight to retain our market share”. Tracy is co-founder of the Nationwide Solicitors Alliance Limited.
Tracy believes passionately that law firms should not delay in preparing for the unprecedented threat that the legal sector now faces by co-operating with other law firms in order to develop a national brand promoting the ‘high street’ solicitor and doing everything possible to capitalise on their present position in order retain their traditional local markets.
Contact : tracy@solicitorsalliance.co.uk