Our team arrived that day at Napier House to new signage, beautiful umbrellas and tote bags (and pens, of course!). In addition, we were all given a shiny CB branded water bottle and they’ve accompanied our team on some exciting excursions from a gondola ride in Venice to ice-skating in Times Square, New York, as well as trips to Spain, Serbia and Thailand. You can follow their adventures on Instagram: @thecbwaterbottlediaries
We are happy that our team has embraced our new branding and equally delighted that our clients and peers have given it positive feedback as well.
A recent highlight for us at CooperBurnett is being listed in three categories in the rankings from Chambers and Partners for the first time: Real Estate for the South; Corporate M&A/SME owner-managed businesses for the South; and a new national category of SME focused firms. In addition, Russell Brinkhurst, a Partner in our Corporate and Commercial team has also been ranked (and moved up a tier!).
We are also proud to be recognised, once again, by The Legal 500 in 2025; our firm’s Corporate and Commercial team – with special mention for Victoria Sampson and Russell Brinkhurst - is ranked in Kent, Surrey and Sussex.
As ever, the 3Ps remain at the centre of our life at CooperBurnett - people, people and ‘profit’. Joseph Oates commemorated 25 years at TeamCB and Sarah Strong completed 10 years. Next year, team members Katie Hilsdon, Lisa Connolly and Gemma Gillespie will all celebrate 10 years with us.
We welcomed three new Partners in 2024. Glen Webb and Lisa Connolly have both been with us for some years and thoroughly deserved their promotion to Partner level, while experienced solicitor Anna Dunn joined us very recently as a Partner in our Residential Property team.
Over the past 12 months, we have really enjoyed showcasing the talent and experience in our team through a series of Table Talks –we invite three team members to join us round our boardroom table for a chat, which we share as an interview article (look out for them in the News section on our website). Oliver Bussell, Russell Brinkhurst, David Brown, Lisa Connolly, Glen Webb, Sarah Strong, Gemma Gillespie, Katie Gillam and John Spence have all taken part this year and we’re lining up more team members for 2025.
Our continued commitment to encouraging aspiring lawyers has been highlighted by the fact that we’ve awarded three training contracts during the year – to Courtney Kan, Joshua Hayes and Iola Cameron.
As ever, our involvement in the local community continues to be a great sense of pride to us all. This year saw Ayla Clissold from our Residential Property team join our active Charity Committee, which also includes Lisa Connolly and Katie Hilsdon. They are currently pulling together plans for our big charity fundraiser in the summer of 2025 to raise funds for our charity of choice, Jigsaw South East. Watch this space to find out more - it’s going to our biggest challenge yet!
We’ve continued to raise funds all this year for Jigsaw South East - which offers grief support to children and young people who have experienced the death of a significant family member. Recently, we held a ‘Sparkle Day’, when our team spent a day in their most shiny outfits.
In September, we were thrilled to once again support the Walk Tonbridge Festival, organised by the phenomenal James Pavlou. This incredible initiative raised nearly £37,000 for charity this year, with close to £15,000 heading to Sustain, the community food and fuel bank in Tonbridge. A record 225 people took part in the Festival’s flagship event, the Walk Tonbridge Marathon – including two teams from CooperBurnett, proving we don’t just ‘talk the talk’, we do also ‘walk the walk’.
We are also continuing our partnership to support the equestrian teams at Beacon Academy in Crowborough and Uplands Academy in Wadhurst (both part of The MARK Education Trust). It’s inspiring to hear about their successes and what they’ve achieved personally being part of the team.
In the meantime, we have remained committed to our local professional community. Partner John Spence stepped down in January after two years as President of the Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge & District Law Society; while Solicitor, Imogen Fleur, is currently in her second year as President of Kent Junior Lawyers Division (JLD).
As a team, we have continued to be an active member of Sevenoaks District Chamber of Commerce, which has successfully been running events in both Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge now for more than a year. Natasha Smith, Natalie Lai and Katie Hilsdon recently attended the organisation’s Christmas lunch at Wildernesse House, near Sevenoaks.
Our firm is also a committed member of the Tunbridge Wells-wide corporate environmental initiative, Amplifi, with Gemma Gillespie driving this forward for us.
We have watched the Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival grow in prestige each year and, as part of the third event, Victoria Sampson was invited to interview author Rosie Hewlett about her magical retelling of Medea. We are looking forward to seeing which authors come to our town as part of the 2025 Festival.
Victoria Sampson is continuing to co-host the Tunbridge Wells business forum, enTWine; while Joseph Oates has completed a year on the board of Royal Tunbridge Wells Together (RTWT) BID, which does so much to support the businesses in our town.
We recently sponsored the Singalong Santa Parade – part of an evening of celebrations organised by RTWT BID to welcome Christmas to Tunbridge Wells. Victoria and her daughter Claudia even joined Santa on his sleigh to belt out some festive tunes!
A recent highlight for CooperBurnett was being the Headline Sponsor of the inaugural Tunbridge Wells Business Awards, which took place at Trinity Theatre. We provided hands-on support, as Victoria compered the evening, alongside Jess Gibson from the TN Card, organiser of the event. Congratulations to all the runners-up and finalists - we are thrilled to be part of such a thriving business community!
We sponsored the ‘Large Business’ category at the first Tonbridge Business Awards in the summer and are excited that Jess has already shared some of her plans for the 2025 awards programme for that town.
We are grateful that our clients have remained loyal to us; our workload has been very ‘active’ across all our practice areas, with a significant pipeline of work already in place for 2025. Business areas that are fairly new to us as a firm – such as Construction, headed up by Partner David Brown and Planning, led by Partner Oliver Bussell – have taken off, while our more ‘traditional’ areas have continued to flourish.
We acknowledge that the recent Budget has caused concerns for a number of our clients – including business owners, private clients and farmers – but we are continuing to work alongside all our clients as we plot a safe course through 2025.
We do hope that you are feeling as positive as you can in terms of your business, personal goals and aspirations for this New Year. As ever, TeamCB looks forward to supporting you in any way we can. Happy New Year!
Joseph Oates and Victoria Sampson
