Stories
The boardroom of Crowley Millar is lit up with a striking painting of the rooftops of Istanbul. The table in front of the picture is surrounded by ten seats – one for each of the ten partners in the Irish-owned law firm which has just merged with JR Sweeney, a boutique law firm founded by veteran solicitor Joe Sweeney.
The painting is by Garrett Cormican, a noted artist and curator, who started his career in the law as a trainee solicitor with Crowley Millar in 2005. “It is part of a triptych that was hanging in our old office for a while, so eventually I bought it off Garrett,” Hugh Millar, managing partner of the firm, explains. “It attracts so much attention whenever anybody sees it.”
The decision by the two law firms, which will trade as Crowley Millar Solicitors LLP (incorporating J R Sweeney LLP), to merge has also drawn attention as it creates a stronger Irish-owned firm at a time of consolidation in the Irish law market and the entrance of large international practices.
The genesis of a merger
The idea for the merger of Crowley Millar and JR Sweeney arose in Ma Nolan’s Irish pub in the old quarter of Nice in the South of France.
Anthuan Xavier, the founder of accountancy firm BDO Simpson Xavier and a serial company chairman, was attending a wedding in the resort town of Villefranche-sur-Mer when he asked his friend Sweeney to join him for lunch in Le Plongeoir, the iconic rock-top Nice restaurant that is famous for its diving boards perched above the sea.
It was Sunday, May 22 and Liverpool were playing Wolves, so Xavier suggested a pint in Ma Nolan’s after the long lunch. “We chatted about life and what I was planning to do next,” Sweeney said. “We spoke about when it might be time to search for a merger partner.”
Sweeney had practised law for five decades, so he was conscious of ensuring his team and his clients were looked after in the decades ahead.
The lawyer wanted to step back a little too, but he explained to Xavier he didn’t want to retire.
Xavier mentioned that he had heard Crowley Millar wanted to grow and was looking for Irish firms to partner with.
“I obviously knew Crowley Millar by reputation and as practitioners, but it was really our mutual friend Anthuan who suggested we combine forces,” Sweeney recalled. “It was as simple as that.” Crowley Millar had already appointed Smith & Williamson (now Evelyn Partners) to find other law firms to match with. “We had taken some active steps to find out who was out there,” Millar said. “But then in the middle of that Anthuan got in touch and we took it from there.”
The merger happened remarkably quickly. “We have been down this road before, and my view is if you’re going to do it, do it,” Millar said.
“You can’t let things drag on and affect your business. You get a feel for it pretty quick if it is going to work or not.”
Formal talks began in September of this year, and the merger was announced on November 20. “It was a slam dunk, an ideal fit,” Sweeney said. “We didn’t have a litigation section (like Crowley Millar). Our work was purely private client, partner-led commercial work, and property work but nothing else.”
According to Millar, the due diligence focused on ensuring that “everybody got on with everybody and that there were no significant conflicts”. A deal started to come together that would see JR Sweeney’s 11 staff merge with Crowley Millar creating a team of 48 people across offices in Dublin and Limerick. JR Sweeney solicitors Eileen Kelly and Bryan Sweeney are partners in the merged firm, while Joe Sweeney will take on the role of non-executive chairman. It gives clients in JR Sweeney access to new departments like litigation where Crowley Millar are specialists, as well as bulking up areas both firms already operate in like corporate law and commercial property.
“We have a very robust litigation department,” Millar said. “And good property and corporate departments which we were trying to strengthen up. The merger allowed us to grow both, so it was a really good fit.”
Tackling the “Ferrari fugitives”
Hugh Millar is best known as a tough legal combatant prepared to take on bigger foes. He has litigated for entrepreneurs like Paddy McKillen, and successfully defended businesses against spurious personal injury claims. Most recently Crowley Millar was involved in detaining a Moldovan passenger plane in Dublin amid a dispute over €4.2 million and achieved a rare victory for investors against the Cartu brothers, two international fraudsters known as the Ferrari fugitives.
In the case against the Cartu brothers, James Bardon, a partner in Crowley Millar with John O’Regan BL and Marcus Dowling SC, secured an important judgement from Justice Michael Twomey on behalf of their client William Powers against Greymountain Management Limited in Liquidation, Ryan Coates, Liam Grainger, David Cartu and Jonathan Cartu. Greymountain was a Dublin-registered company used to defraud investors, including Powers, using an electronic trading scam. During the three-year period of its existence, Greymountain, which banked with AIB in Ireland, had $186 million in credit card payments made to it.
In his judgment, Justice Twomey found that Coates and Grainger were “both in complete dereliction of their duty to be aware of what the company, of which they were directors, was doing (whether that was something that was legal or illegal)”.
The judge found they “abrogated their responsibility as directors to the Cartu Brothers who used that opportunity to defraud investors,” and he said he was forced to “conclude that this impropriety and dereliction of duty on their part was of such a degree as to justify both Mr Coates and Mr Grainger being held personally liable to Mr Powers for the return of the sum of $124,027”. Legal costs were awarded to Powers.
Up until this judgment no Irish Court had held that the corporate veil should be pierced in order to allow directors to be personally held liable for the acts or omissions of their company. I asked Millar how his firm ended up in the thick of taking a highly complex and fascinating case involving the Cartu brothers, who for years enjoyed an international playboy lifestyle dating models and collecting Ferraris.
“The case was a referral,” Millar said. “We pursued it ourselves and the barristers and the judgment is groundbreaking. We knew it would be challenging but we felt it was worth it. So much money was channelled through AIB. I bank with AIB, and I’m not slagging AIB but we were saying ‘how on earth did this all happen?’. We felt this was an appropriate case of fraud where the corporate veil should be lifted, and (the directors) made personally liable.”
The complexity of the case meant the judgment alone ran to 79 pages. “To confuse size with expertise is a mistake,” Millar said. “You are either good at what you do, or you are not. We are involved in a lot of very significant litigation and do significant work for insurance companies. The reason we get referrals is we’re good at it.”
Millar said Crowley Millar wanted to challenge itself by taking on hard cases. “A lot of litigation is routine, but you need cases that challenge you, because they are interesting and worth it.”
Ethos, expansion, Eversheds
In its 2022 law firm survey, Evelyn Partners found that in the last year one in three firms surveyed had “been approached or made an approach with a view to a merger and most of them were approaches made by a UK or International law firm”.
Seven of the top 20 firms in Ireland it found are now international and / or British owned. I ask if merging with an overseas firm is something Crowley Millar might consider in time. “I am not interested in merging with (an overseas firm),” Millar said. “I have had the opportunity to do that, but we rejected it. We don’t want to become a very small cog in a very large wheel. The politics of it suits some people, but it doesn’t suit me. We want to be at the coalface and have that type of relationship with our clients.”
Joe Sweeney takes a similar view. “In practice, it is about the client, the client, the client,” he said. “It is very important to deliver partner-led service. I also believe that homegrown practices that are Irish-based are really concerned about the welfare of their clients. Many of the clients I work with have been with me for 40 years.
“It was important to me to find a home they would be comfortable in. There is nothing wrong with foreign-owned firms necessarily but are they as dedicated to client service as indigenous firms? I’m not sure.”
Sweeney said many of his clients were multigenerational families that valued continuity and personal service. “We might have started with the older generation, and now we are advising the younger generation. That level of knowledge is a real plus in my view,” Sweeney said.
Millar said a mid-tier firm like Crowley Millar was on speed dial for many of its business clients. “We find with our corporate clients we are often like an extension of their offices,” Millar said. “We don’t open a file and charge for every phone call. Our clients are on the phone all the time about all sorts of stuff but that is relationship building and from our perspective it is perfect. It is something we want to provide them.”
Crowley Millar has an office in Limerick, where Galway-born Sweeney established his first practice in 1975. The business then opened an office on Baggot Street in 1988, before merging with a solicitor Rory O’Donnell’s firm to establish O’Donnell Sweeney Solicitors in 1995. In 2000 the combined firm, which then employed 30 people, moved to Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin 2.
Around 2003 or 2004, Sweeney brought the Eversheds franchise to Ireland, and the firm was renamed Eversheds O’Donnell Sweeney (today Eversheds Sutherland). “That was an extremely good move,” Sweeney reflected. “It came about through a great shooting friend of mine called Cornelius Medvei who was the senior partner in Eversheds in London at the time.”
As Eversheds O’Donnell Sweeney, the firm remained owned by its Irish partners, but could now tap into the rapidly growing Eversheds network. In 2009 Sweeney took early retirement as he had stage two and three melanoma, so he needed to rest in order to recover. “I missed the law,” Sweeney said, “I was still a consultant, but I missed the cut and thrust.” In 2012 he started again by founding JR Sweeney. “I opened a small boutique practice to look after private clients and owner-managed businesses, which was always my interest,” Sweeney said.
Among the businesses he has acted for over the years are sports chain Elverys, and James Murphy’s Lifes2Good, which was sold for €150 million in 2017. As chair, Sweeney said he hoped to be a mentor to other solicitors while remaining close to his clients.
“Many if not all of my clients are very good friends,” he said. “I don’t ever take a position in their business which allows me to give independent advice, and I don’t believe in telling them what they want to hear.”
“I see no future for small firms”
After the merger, Crowley Millar remains on the lookout for other mergers. “The way the market is changing, I see no future for small firms,” Millar said. “It is much the same in accountancy. You have to be a certain size to do a certain type of work. The size we are at, and slightly bigger, is where we want to be.”
Law, Millar said, had become increasingly specialised with multiple lawyers being used to close any significant deal. “You can get swamped very quickly by the volume of correspondence,” Millar said. “So you need a certain mass. I think over the next 10 years the whole face of the legal profession will change, after already changing a lot in the last ten. You need to be at a certain level to maintain your position.”
General practitioners were becoming increasingly rare in the Irish law scene. “Joe knows a little about everything, but you don’t often find that now,” Millar said. “Everyone is in channels which increases cost. You will find someone who knows all about tax but knows little about anything else. This is an issue for big firms as they have so many specialties and cost increases considerably, compared to mid-level firms.”
“We are a mid-tier commercial firm, so we have to keep moving. We haven’t shut the exercise of looking for amalgamations and acquisitions down. We will see how that goes, but there is nothing on the horizon at the moment.”
Will the move of KPMG and EY into the law impact them? “I don’t see it as a threat,” Millar said. “For certain types of work in-house works, but it doesn’t always. I think the level of it will increase over time, but it won’t be a significant threat to firms like ours.”
Law firms, Millar said, provide a “counterbalance” to accountancy firms which clients appreciated.
Are clients who use Irish-only offices at a disadvantage as they move into other markets? “I think an Irish-owned firm that enjoys an international connection is a very good formula,” Sweeney replied. Sweeney said Crowley Millar was part of the Mackrell network of law firms internationally which it could tap into. “This gives us huge firepower around the world,” he said.
Sweeney said the response from his clients to the merger had been positive. “They regard it as a logical step forward,” he said.
Millar said his clients had a similar reaction as had his team. “It is energising for staff having new faces around the office,” Millar added. “There is an interesting new dynamic, and we all have to sit up a bit.”
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