An Oswestry solicitor is celebrating 40 years as an equity partner at the same time as the firm he now heads up celebrates its 55th year.
Richard Lloyd is the current Senior Partner of GHP Legal. His legal career began in 1980 when he accepted a trainee position at a firm of solicitors in Aberystwyth. In early 1983 he joined AW Brown & Co in Oswestry as an assistant solicitor and two years later became an equity partner with Alan Brown.
The firm of AW Brown was renamed AW Brown & Lloyd, and when founder Alan Brown became a full-time judge in 1991, Richard became Senior Partner. In 2000, Brown & Lloyd merged with Gwilym Hughes & Partners (established in 1970) and that firm later became what is now known as GHP Legal.
Richard had in fact attended Llanfyllin High School, Aberystwyth University and Chester College of Law with Stephen Edwards, who was a partner with Gwilym Hughes and Partners, and it was this link that effectively led to the merger of Brown & Lloyd with Gwilym Hughes & Partners.
Originally based in Wrexham where the firm still has its head office, GHP Legal also has an office in Llangollen. Brown and Lloyd’s original Oswestry office was at The Cross, Oswestry but in 1985 it moved to The Albany in Willow Street after the firm purchased premises there, and it was here that Richard was based when he became Senior Partner of GHP Legal.
Coincidentally, GHP Legal regained its presence at The Cross when it purchased and remodelled the former Co-operative Bank premises in 2019 to accommodate a new dedicated property, commercial and agriculture department after a planned expansion and merger with Milton Francis & Hughes Solicitors. The project later won GHP Legal a Civic Society award for making “a significant contribution to the landscape and life of the community”.
“Effectively,” says Richard, “I have spent 42 years of my working career on The Cross and in Willow Street, Oswestry, in offices just a few hundred yards apart from each other.”
Reflecting on how things have changed during his career, he said:
“I started off my career working in general legal practice, which included a great deal of criminal and civil litigation together with non-contentious work. Then, as a firm, we began recruiting specialists, and I believe that specialism is responsible for our growth and our continuing success.
“For my own part, I decided to move away from advocacy in 1999 and concentrate on property matters, including residential, commercial and agricultural. I am a member of the Country Landowners Association and now specialise in agricultural and high value commercial and residential property matters.
“Over the years I have seen a great change in the way that solicitors work. Originally our secretaries had manual typewriters, they then moved to electric typewriters and eventually to word processors and computers, all of which have speeded up the legal process.
“My aim throughout my career has been to do the very best I can for my clients. Over the years many of my clients have indeed become good friends. I am very pleased to be in partnership with my current partners, but it’s somewhat sobering to think that four of them were not even born when I first became an equity partner!”
Richard Lloyd, Managing Partner of GHP Legal.
