Escalate completes clean sweep of legal honours at the British Legal Awards

Escalate, the ground-breaking dispute resolution process for SMEs, was awarded the hotly contested ‘Legal Services Innovation Award’ at the prestigious British Legal Awards last night – completing an unprecedented clean sweep of the major national legal awards during 2018.

Hosted by Legal Week, the glittering awards ceremony was attended by over 1,000 lawyers and serves as a showcase for the achievements of the legal sector.

This latest recognition means that Escalate has now won three major national legal awards this year. In addition to last night’s honour at the British Legal Awards, Escalate has been recognised as ‘Best Collaboration Initiative’ at the Lawyer Awards and for ‘Excellence in Business Development’ at the Law Society Excellence Awards. Escalated was also named ‘Innovation of the Year’ at the British Accountancy Awards.

Escalate helps SMEs to achieve a prompt settlement to a wide range of commercial disputes, with fixed fees payable only on a successful outcome and no upfront costs.

Chris Clay, managing director of Escalate, said: “We were driven by a desire to create a service that would tackle the issues that SMEs encounter when they try to get access to justice – long lead times, high upfront costs, considerable uncertainty. We knew that the solution would need to be innovative and rely on collaboration between a number of professional services firms. The result was Escalate.

“We’re incredibly proud that our peers in the legal sector have recognised this once again at the British Legal Awards, with Escalate being cited for innovation, collaboration and business development at the legal industry’s most prestigious award ceremonies this year. That’s a unique achievement, reflecting Escalate’s genuinely ground-breaking approach.

“This is reinforced by the demand that we’re seeing from clients for the Escalate process – we’re already helping businesses to recover more than £40 million that’s locked up in commercial disputes. 

“Given the interest in Escalate, we’re looking to expand our network of partner firms and increase access to justice for more SMEs. If you’re interested in finding out how you and your clients could benefit from using Escalate, please get in touch.”