Collier: Incredible pressure on the business
Nearly 200 staff have been redundant at Sheffield firm SSB Law after it formally went into administration last week, after efforts to find a buyer or investor failed.
The joint administrators, Anthony Collier and Kelly Burton from FRP, said buyers have been secured for SSB’s portfolio of 42,708 live cases and all claimants have been notified of the transition.
SSB was one of the law firms that led the way in diversifying a personal injury practice into one handling a wide range of consumer claims but filed a notice to appoint administrators last November, at which point it was being marketed for sale.
The administrators said: “The business had suffered ongoing financial challenges and unfortunately has now ceased trading and has been placed into administration, with 192 employees made redundant.”
A core team will stay on to support the administrators carry out an orderly wind down of the business over the next few months and ensure the smooth transition of casework.
Founded in 2007 as Simpson Sissons & Brooke, it has long sought to innovate – chief executive Jeremy Brooke told Legal Futures in 2016 that “the traditional law firm approach has a limited future”.
It created SSB Group in 2018, home to the law firm, SSB Law, as well as SSB Funding, SSB Insurance, SSB Financial and SSB Compliance.
Mr Collier said: “The financial challenges facing SSB put incredible pressure on the business and, regrettably, meant that it was unsustainable in its current form without significant investment. We’re working closely with staff to support their applications to the Redundancy Payments Service.
“While SSB is no longer trading, we’ve secured the transition of all live case work to new providers and have notified clients. We’ll be managing that process over the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition.”
The firm dealt with business energy, cavity wall insulation, data breach, financial mis-selling, Japanese knotweed, medical negligence, mortgage mis-selling, pension mis-selling, personal injury, professional negligence, Plevin, timeshare mis-selling and unauthorised collective investment scheme claims.
SSB specialised in taking on cases previously rejected by other law firms, saying it accepted 15% of such cases it sees and wins over 85% of them. It also took on cases from other collapsed law firms, such as HH Law and Pure Legal.
Surely the SRA had ample warning of this impending disaster from annual audit reports? If not, why not?