At half past eight on a weekday morning the crowd coming off the trains at London Bridge splits three ways: into the offices of More London and the Shard, over the bridge into the City, and down Borough High Street towards Guy's Hospital. Southwark starts at the river, with Bankside, Borough and Bermondsey, and runs south through Walworth and Camberwell to Peckham, Nunhead and Dulwich. It is dense, young and unequal, with expensive new flats a short walk from large council estates, and its legal work reflects both.
Housing comes first
Southwark Council is one of the biggest council landlords in the country, and a large share of its flats now belong to leaseholders who bought under the right to buy. Service charges, major works bills, lease extensions and the long regeneration of the Aylesbury Estate keep housing solicitors busy, as do the new leasehold towers at Elephant Park, Canada Water and along the Old Kent Road. At the other end of the market, the Georgian and Victorian houses of Dulwich and the warehouse conversions of Shad Thames bring conveyancing chains, boundary questions and inheritance tax planning. Private renters fill much of Peckham and Camberwell, and deposit and possession disputes follow.
Work, hospitals and universities
The borough's largest employers are its hospitals, Guy's at London Bridge and King's College Hospital and the Maudsley at Denmark Hill, together with London South Bank University, the London College of Communication at Elephant and Castle and the council itself. Add the office workers of London Bridge and Bankside and the hospitality staff of Borough Market, and every kind of employment dispute reaches Southwark solicitors, from NHS whistleblowing to unpaid wages in a restaurant kitchen.
The courts that sit here
Southwark is unusual among boroughs in having two Crown Courts inside its boundary. Southwark Crown Court, beside the river at London Bridge, hears many of the country's largest fraud and financial prosecutions, while Inner London Crown Court at Elephant and Castle deals with serious crime from across south London. Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court takes the summary cases. Civil and family matters go to courts elsewhere in the capital, most often the Central Family Court in Holborn.
Fees and legal aid
Ask every firm whether a matter is charged at a fixed fee, as wills, conveyancing and straightforward divorces usually are, or by the hour with an estimate for each stage. Southwark has a long tradition of legal aid work and still has firms with contracts in crime, family, housing and immigration, so if money is tight say so at the first call, and read whether you can get legal help for free. Every firm listed here is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the featured ones have also passed the site's own verification of their contact details, SRA record and public reviews.
Finding a firm near you
Each area of law has its own Southwark page below, with the firms that practise it. The Southwark search finds solicitors near any address from Rotherhithe to Dulwich Village, the Best Solicitors in London page covers the capital as a whole, and the borough list leads to neighbouring parts of London. The legal insights section explains common problems in plain English.
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