Ayesha Vardag Solicitors has incorporated and become Vardags in the wake of a string of high-profile wins for clients and rapid growth…
Ayesha Vardag remains as the firm’s Managing Director or ‘Senior Partner’, while Emily Brand – a senior matrimonial lawyer, formerly of Manches – is employed as Director (or ‘Partner’). Susan Budaly, a distinguished member of the Family Law Bar, formerly of One Garden Court, also joins the firm, bringing its total team of lawyers to seven, up from just one four years ago.
In that time, the firm has positioned itself at the very forefront of English Family Law, winning against the old magic circle firms and cutting into their market share. It reported a turnover of £1.5m last year, doubling its previous turnover year-on-year for the third successive year, and expects to do the same again this year.
“Last year we handled 24 multi-million or billion-pound cases and 21 mid-level cases, addressing a total asset base of several billion,” Ayesha Vardag says.
Ayesha Vardag Solicitors (now Vardag Solicitors Limited, trading as Vardags) gained worldwide attention in 2009 acting for German heiress Katrin Radmacher.
It achieved what was a reported as a ‘landmark’ victory for her in the Court of Appeal, to apply a prenuptial agreement contested by her French ex-husband. An appeal judgment is now awaited following the husband’s appeal to the Supreme Court before nine Law Lords in March.
Over the past year, the firm’s work has included acting for Michelle Young in the high profile ‘Brewster’s millions’ case regarding the whereabouts of her husband’s possible £400m fortune, acting in a £40m cross-border nullity case and obtaining what is said to be the highest interim child maintenance award ever against a member of a foreign royal family.
Ayesha Vardag says: “Our strength is in our unique style, which combines empathy for clients’ individual, often culturally-specific, experience with commercial savvy. We bring a dynamic, modern approach to the law, looking not only at how it has been applied in the past but at how it could and should be applied in an evolving society. Our firm will continue to grow organically, slowly recruiting stellar lawyers where we find them, retaining our boutique quality and personal service. We really care about our cases and our clients”.
In July 2009, Ayesha Vardag – a widely-broadcast legal media commentator – was named The Times ‘Lawyer of the Week’ and the Law Society Gazette’s ‘Lawyer in the News’. Ayesha Vardag Solicitors has more recently been profiled in The Lawyer in March, and has been shortlisted by The Lawyer for its Niche Practice of the Year award, to be announced in June.
Address: Vardags, Bell House, 8 Bell Yard, The Strand, London. WC2A 2JR
Switchboard: + 44 (0) 207 404 9390
Fax: + 44 (0) 207 404 8995
Email: contact@vardags.com
Web: http://www.vardags.com
Ayesha Vardag graduated from Cambridge University with Honours in Law and from Brussels with a Master’s in European Law, working at the International Courts of Justice in the Hague and the UN(IAEA) in Vienna. She then trained and qualified as a finance lawyer at Linklaters London and Moscow on power station and diamond mine projects, before moving on to capital markets work at New York law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges. Ayesha was called to the Bar in 1999 and joined 4 New Square chambers, then crossed to family law at Sears Tooth. She founded Ayesha Vardag Solicitors in 2005.
