As we reach the end of our 40th anniversary year, we thought it would be a good time to look back and reflect on a memorable twelve months.

When the company started as a small solicitors practice in 1978, the events of the last year were like a distant pipedream, but sure enough, forty years of development has seen Ison Harrison now ranked as one of the top 20 solicitors in Yorkshire.

Our 40th anniversary year started with the announcement that we would be opening another new branch, this time in the thriving market town of Otley. This opened in March and, headed by Nigel Cowley, it has already proved to be a vital legal resource to the local people of Otley through our full range of legal services including conveyancing, family law and wills and probate.

Making Ison Harrison even stronger

Later in the year we opened our 13th branch, in the centre of the historic city of York. This was our furthest venture from our city centre base in Leeds, and, headed up by experienced conveyancing expert Chris Brierley, the branch is already proving to be a success with new instructions and a strong team based there.

The summer months provided us with an opportunity to concentrate on our 40th anniversary celebrations. We announced our #Big40 campaign, which has seen us choose 40 charities to make 40 donations to, from widespread nominations (over 600 in fact!).

Our big birthday was marked in special fashion in June when we held our Big 40 family event  at the Tetley centre in Leeds. The famous former brewery proved to be a fantastic location with hundreds of staff from all our regional branches coming together for a great family day out – complete with special games and live music.

From an ongoing support and sponsorship perspective we have also continued to forge strong relationships with charities such as the Erb’s Palsy Group and Little Hiccups, of which we have made firm friends with the charity founders and we look forward to maintaining this special relationship over the coming year.

In addition to our jam-packed year of events and campaigns, we also agreed a key sponsorship deal with Radio Aire to promote #LeedsChristmas. In partnership with Leeds City Council, we sponsored the prestigious Leeds lights switch on as well as the popular Christkindelmarkt in Millenium Square. We wanted to mark the end of our 40th anniversary year in a very special way and being a part of #LeedsChristmas has helped us do that.

Improving the legal expertise at Ison Harrison

As well as the new offices that opened in York and Otley, we announced the expansion of our Huddersfield office, with the branch now taking over the ground floor of their building in addition to the first floor they have occupied since January 2017. Graham Roberts is our new Huddersfield branch manager and our growth across the region has naturally seen a number of new faces bringing more expertise, professionalism and dynamism to Ison Harrison.

This extended specialist skillset has enabled us to take on a broader range of services in 2018, so that we can reach out and help more people, and that is something we intend to continue in 2019. As managing partner Jonathan Wearing comments:

“We’ve been planning our anniversary year for a long time, but we never imagined it would go so well. We have tried to mix some celebrations with really consolidating our position as an important legal resource in the region, and we certainly intend to continue that into next year.”

As we move into 2019, we are already making plans to strengthen Ison Harrison further.

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