Irwin Mitchell boosts Southern Property Team with new partner hire

Sam Knight

National law firm Irwin Mitchell’s Property Division is re-recruiting Sam Knight to its Southern based team. Sam will be a partner based in the firm’s Chichester office. The new appointment takes Irwin Mitchell’s Property Division to 25 partners and over 150 qualified staff.

Sam has re-joined Irwin Mitchell from Coffin Mew which he joined last August and subsequently was promoted to their partnership.

Sam advises on all aspects of commercial real estate legal services with a specialism in strategic land and residential led development, acting for landowners, developers and land promoters. In particular he advises on promotion agreements, options and conditional contracts. He co-led Irwin Mitchell’s firmwide strategic land sub sector before his departure last year.

In his time at Coffin Mew, Sam has also developed a niche specialism and client base in nitrate mitigation matters, particularly delivering large scale mitigation sites providing offset nitrate mitigation to facilitate grants of permission for development. He will bring this new skill to Irwin Mitchell, dovetailing with firm’s Planning & Environment team.

Deal highlights have been a £50 million conditional on planning sale to Dandara Homes for a site capable of providing around 700 homes.

Adrian Barlow, Partner and Director of Legal Services, Real Estate at Irwin Mitchell said, “Sam’s decision to re-join Irwin Mitchell is welcome news. He is a highly respected and well-liked colleague, and he will enhance our real estate offering in the South of England and our reputation in the strategic land arena. His new skills in nitrate mitigation will complement our existing team and this will be an important service line for us in an era when environmental issues are to the fore.

Sam will be a great asset to our national property practice – helping us to continue to fulfil our ambition to provide first-class advice to clients. Welcome back Sam!”

Sam is Irwin Mitchell’s 11th partner appointment since the beginning of 2022, following on from the recent appointment of employment partner Helen Kidd in Manchester.

In addition to its newly recruited partners, Irwin Mitchell announced in May that it had added 13 new partners as part of this year’s promotion round.

It also recently announced two new offices in Cardiff and Liverpool and has continued with its ‘Flexible By Choice’ ways of hybrid working empowering colleagues to make their own decisions about where and when they will work subject to client requirements.