ABOVE: Tony Cheetham, Daniel Ball, Deborah Allen and Colin Bailey of Fraser Dawbarns at their new home in the Tuesday Market Place in King’s Lynn
A new era dawns for Fraser Dawbarns... With a tradition of service stretching back 170 years, the legal firm of Fraser Dawbarns is now looking forward to a bright future from its newly-refurbished offices in the heart of King’s Lynn
W
hen Charles Dickens wrote about lawyers, he invoked the kind of descriptions usually reserved for the living dead. Not only that but he placed them in dimly-lit, mouldy offices, bleak rookeries and twisted buildings full of watchful, avaricious shadows. Fortunately, things have changed considerably since the fictionalised days of Jarndyce v Jarndyce and Dickens (who spent three years working in the courts of 19th century London) would have to write a gentler story if he was to put pen to paper today. The legal practice of Fraser Dawbarns LLP in
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King’s Lynn and their new home in the town’s Tuesday Market Place would force Dicken’s jaundiced pen to produce an entirely different kind of portrait. Solicitors Fraser Dawbarns has been around since Dickens was reporting on the Chancery courts. The company started out in 1842 when James Edward Fraser began practising in Wisbech. Dawbarns wasn’t far behind and opened its doors in 1885. The names of the legal firms changed as partners joined, left and retired over the years and they expanded through mergers and takeovers of other legal firms.
Finally, in 2008, Dawbarns – which had previously merged with Pearson in King’s Lynn and had been known as Dawbarns Pearson – merged with Fraser of March and Wisbech to become Fraser Dawbarns, two family companies with a long heritage united in law. It wasn’t the final partnership. The company merged with Waterman Cheetham of Wisbech following this, but Fraser Dawbarns retained its name and expanded its breadth of expertise even further. Fraser Dawbarns has reach. It can offer legal support in almost every single area of our lives and deaths. At any one time they can be working on a
KLmagazine August 2012