Addleshaw Booth & Co was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 law firm

Law firm

A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise clients about their legal rights and responsibilities, and to represent clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other...

 which merged with Theodore Goddard

Theodore Goddard

Theodore Goddard was an English law firm based in London. The firm merged with Addleshaw Booth & Co on 1 May 2003 to become Addleshaw Goddard...

 in May 2003.

Itself the product of a merger between Booth & Co. and Addleshaw Sons & Latham, Addleshaw Booth was a 'heavyweight' in the North of England

Northern England

Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North or the North Country, is a cultural region of England. It is not an official government region, but rather an informal amalgamation of counties. The southern extent of the region is roughly the River Trent, while the North is bordered...

 legal sector, with offices in Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 and Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

. Its local standing, amongst other things, led to the firm's high-profile appointment as the official lawyer

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

s to the 2002 Commonwealth Games

2002 Commonwealth Games

The 2002 Commonwealth Games were held in Manchester, England from 25 July to 4 August 2002. The XVII Commonwealth Games was the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in the UK, eclipsing London's 1948 Summer Olympics in numbers of teams and athletes participating.After the 1996 Manchester...

.

Addleshaw Booth was the employer of Sally Clark

Sally Clark

Sally Clark was a British solicitor who became the victim of an infamous miscarriage of justice when she was wrongly convicted of the murder of two of her sons in 1999...

 (and also her husband), the solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

 wrongly convicted

Miscarriage of justice

A miscarriage of justice primarily is the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. The term can also apply to errors in the other direction—"errors of impunity", and to civil cases. Most criminal justice systems have some means to overturn, or "quash", a wrongful...

 of murdering her two sons in 1999.

It was a member of the Norton Rose M5 alliance

Norton Rose

Norton Rose is an international legal practice offering a business law service from 39 offices across Europe, Asia Pacific, Canada, Africa and the Middle East...

, which disbanded in 1998.

However, the firm's small office in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and its failure to garner City

City of London

The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

-based clients, led to the tie-up with Theodore Goddard in the spring of 2003 to become Addleshaw Goddard

Addleshaw Goddard

Addleshaw Goddard LLP is a corporate law firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is structured as a LLP and has almost 750 lawyers, with offices in Leeds, London and Manchester...

. Seen by many commentators in the legal sector as a takeover, the majority of the management board of the new firm were made up of Addleshaw Booth & Co's partners.