Hill Dickinson boosts national restructuring team with hire of partner Will Jones

Leading commercial law firm Hill Dickinson has boosted its Restructuring team with the lateral hire of insolvency and restructuring partner Will Jones.

Will joins from Knights, which he joined as part of Knight’s acquisition of Turner Parkinson, the firm where he progressed from qualification to partnership in four years, having specialised in this practice area for his whole career to date.

Based in Hill Dickinson’s Manchester office but with a national remit and client base, Will has already built a strong reputation in the field of insolvency and restructuring. He is widely known and well regarded for providing expert legal support to insolvency practitioners and funders in the structuring, handling and implementation of corporate insolvency processes.

Will has significant experience in advising directors on their duties when their companies are in distress and for bringing or defending antecedent transaction claims arising out of liquidations. He also provides legal support for complex bankruptcies.

Welcoming Will to Hill Dickinson, Paul Spence, head of the firm’s Insolvency and Restructuring team, said: “Our work in insolvency and restructuring has grown exponentially in recent years as our client base has expanded nationally. Adding additional partner-level capacity to the team is very much in line with our original strategic planning for 2020 and I am delighted that Will has joined us.

“At the start of 2020, we could never have foreseen that the events of 2020 would affect businesses and all aspects of the global economy so profoundly. We are working very closely with our clients to consider and advise on options, restructure where this may help minimise financial losses and help them emerge as strongly as possible from this second period of lockdown. Having Will on the team gives us valuable additional breadth and capacity at exactly the time when our clients need us most.”

Will Jones added: “I’m delighted to have joined such a well-regarded Insolvency Team and look forward to dealing with the issues and helping business to deal with the fallout that will follow the challenging situation we all find ourselves in at the moment.”

The Restructuring team acts for a substantial number of insolvency practitioners nationally and locally on a broad range of mandates including transactional and contentious assignments, and complex real estate work outs.

Its work was recognised at the 2019 Turnaround Restructuring and Insolvency (TRI) awards when Hill Dickinson was voted Insolvency Law Firm of the Year. The team has been shortlisted for the same award in the TRI 2020 awards, due to take place in December.