Comments on: Manchester – the UK's Most Live-able City, London Falls Outside Top 50

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:57:51 +0000

As a former hard-nosed Londoner now living in Altrincham, Cheshire (the posh part of Manchester) I fully agree with this study having seen both sides of the coin…. but only if you live in a nice part of Manchester. I commute the 10 miles to work in Manchester and trust me, if you do the same you’ll wonder what you ever saw in London!

3 years ago I took a sabbatical to Manchester and have never looked back. For the first year I lived in Manchester city centre which is great up to your early 30’s, but like central London it is not a place you’d feel ’settled’. I then spent a long time looking around the suburbs and ended up in Altrincham which is a lovely place to live – a bustling small town within easy reach of everywhere (including the motorway back to London), the schools are 1st class, there are fantastic restaurants and bars, nice parks etc, very much ‘middle class’.

Fee wise I still manage to get my ‘London rate’ so not much has changed there, and our nice little 3 bedroom semi here cost just £375k compared to the £500k equivalent we had in London. Would I ever consider a move back to London??? Perhaps a 300%+ pay increase might tempt me, but otherwise I’m sticking around up north.

By: Yokel

Yokel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:39:23 +0000

Expensive, dirty, overcrowded, even dangerous – why would anyone want to live in a city?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:01:47 +0000

I agree with a lot of the comments but I think Mia has unfairly taken the rap for the anonymous poster at number one. Turning to her comments, pace and energy can be found all over the country too, you just have to mix with the right sort of people. Many of my friends and colleagues in the big smoke have very little of either most of the time, having to deal with overcrowding, pollution and the communters’ favorite – tube strikes!

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:22:24 +0000

I agree with AI’s comments. To be honest I probably had the same blinkered view that Mia had when I left Linklaters but soon became to realise that the London market is very narrow-minded in its approach to non-London legal centres. I suppose it is commonplace that inhabitants of a capital city dispay snobbery to their regional counterparts. Yes, the payscale may be less when you are junior but the gap soon falls away if you reach the dizzy heights (!) of partnership and where you also have strategic influence, command respect from major clients and are valued by the firm for your contribution. I am sick of the intellectual debates that London lawyers think are necessary to conclude transactions. Lack of commerciality is something I often hear about London lawyers from major regional, national and international corporates. The recession has shown that clients are now looking elsewhere for legal advice with commercially minded lawyers who really understand the sector they are in and can deliver value for money. The legal marketplace is in transition. Watch this space!

By: Northern and Proud

Northern and Proud — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:05:11 +0000

Mia’s comments are, sadly, stereotypical of the blinkered Londoner. I’d be interested to learn on what basis such views can be substantiated. There is a world outside of London; open your eyes and dare to look outside.

By: Al

Al — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:49:49 +0000

People like Mia, with their blinkered views, get on my wick. I work, outside London, for a strictly non-London firm that routinely beats the likes of Freshfields and Linklaters in bids to advise on complex, ground-breaking £multi-million-or-billion deals. I suspect the same is true of many non-London firms.

Given that I also enjoy a far better quality of life than I ever did working in London (although it’ll probably be a while before the town I live in troubles the likes of Manchester for placement on this sort of list), I do sometimes wonder if for people like Mia there isn’t perhaps some element of self-reassurance that they really want to be living / working n London when there are so many other options out there.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:23:34 +0000

I’m a Londoner born and bred, but practised in Manchester for 4 years before coming back to London last year. But for the fact that you can earn twice as much in London, Manchester offers a far superior quality of life and comparable quality of work to London. In fact, because there are fewer big players up North, the better clients are only spread between a few firms, and so you’ll often have better clients. Manchie has a great social scene and you’re back home a lot earlier to enjoy it (even if you work the same hours you can save so much time not enduring a wretched commute on the tube). Good for Manchester, shame the firms there shaft the assistants on pay!

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:12:52 +0000

I worked in a Magic Circle firm and moved to Manchester to work in a national practice 5 years ago. The work I have undertaken over the last five years outstrips the work I did in London in terms of complexity and leading difficult transactions from an early stage of my career e.g leading an £850 million deal as a 4 PQE on one of the largest deals in the country at the time. In addition, in major regional practices if you have the drive and skills you are able to lead significant client realtionships and get the opportunity to play a strategic role in the business. This all round training has been important in developing my skills and attributes as a commercially focused lawyer with a deep understanding of clients and what they want and not just simply being a transactional workhorse. Therefore please do not generalise about work outside of London!

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:51:52 +0000

Comment 4 from Anon; why is living in a crowded, stressful place “part of the experience”? Surely the goal is to get the best quality of work yet coupled with the best quality of life i.e the minimum amount of stress. The regions offer the latter in spades but legal centres such as Manchester and Leeds enjoy work at a level akin to that in London. The focus on stress being integral to work life demonstrates the difference between London lawyers and those in the regions. We are here because we want to be; not because we couldn’t get jobs in London!

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:39:12 +0000

Manchester is so overrated. You can’t beat London for quality of work and variety of cutting edge social possibilities. NY – am sure it’s great for work, but nowhere near London on vibrancy.