A law firm which has quadrupled in size in just two years is expanding again.
Rachael Gent set up Gent Law just three weeks before the first Covid-19 lockdown was introduced in March 2020.
Since then, the North Staffordshire-based company has grown into a 10-strong operation which specialises in all things property – from sales and purchases and new builds to remortaging and shared ownership.
Now the Trentham firm wants to expand its workforce by a further third to aid its ongoing growth over the next 12 months.
Rachael said: "We opened on March 2, 2020 which was obviously the worst month ever to start a business. At first it was very much a 'do or die' scenario – we'd opened the business, we'd gone all in and we were just sitting ducks.
"But beneficially for us, we had this huge office space, we weren't carrying any historical case loads, so there was no backlog of work, and there was basically nothing to stop us from driving new business.
"We took a deep breath and after many nights on the phone to each other we decided to use the time to make sure we really nailed the things that you don't usually get to do when you first start a business, such as social media and building a website. We just wanted to let people know that, as soon as were able to start work again, we were ready to go."
Rachael added: "We've just celebrated two years in business and if we'd sat down in the beginning and said we’re going to have a team of 10 within 18 months we would have thought that was absolutely amazing.
"But that's what we've managed to do – and it's all because of the demand.
"We thought there would be a lull after the stamp duty holiday last year, but October 2021 and February 2022 have been our busiest two months by a country mile, and it's been the busiest January and February in the 15 years that I've done this job.
"So now we're expanding again. We're on the hunt for three new recruits which will increase our workforce by basically another third."
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Gent Law wants to recruit another qualified fee-earner to work alongside the all-female management team which is made up of Rachael Gent, Clare Sheldon, Tanya Zompi and Jade Orr. The firm is also looking to fill two junior admin roles.
Rachael said: "We've found that, during covid, so many people have had bad experiences with law firms because they're either too big or just can't cope with the workload, but we've managed to find a really nice middle ground.
"We specialise in property and that's all we do, so we're absolutely snowed under. We've managed to scale-up successfully so far and now the only way is up."
She added: "My experience of the conveyancing market over the last 18 months is that it's been an absolute gun fight whether you've been a buyer or a seller, so expansion is definitely on the cards.
"We want to get bigger, scale-up what we already have in place and just fine-tune everything."
