Wedlake Bell - Playbook (2028 TC)

Do you want a TC at Wedlake Bell? Our Playbook gives you all the insights you need to impress!

This Playbook covers:

🧠 Practice Area Strategy
🌍 Office and Growth
📊 Wedlake vs Competitors
💼 Top Clients and Deals
🔎 How to Stand Out

Deadline: 1 May

Wedlake's Top 5 Practice Areas

Here's a breakdown of the firm's 4 key practice areas and how to discuss these in an application or interview to impress Wedklake.

🎨 Art & Luxury - the crown jewel

This is Wedlake Bell's most distinctive practice and its strongest brand. No other mid-market City firm has anything comparable. The team holds Band 1 in Chambers UK and Chambers HNW for Art and Cultural Property Law and is ranked Tier 1 by Legal 500 - the highest possible rankings in both directories.

Who do they advise? Led jointly by Rudy Capildeo and Tim Maxwell (both individually ranked Band 1), the practice advises private collectors, galleries, museums, financial institutions, famous street artists, and governments on the full lifecycle of art and luxury assets: purchase and sale, financing, import/export, restitution claims, heritage protection, and disputes.

What do they advise on? The scope goes well beyond paintings. Capildeo has a strong client base in classic cars, fine violins, fine wine, and yachts, and is a specialist in luxury asset financing and using luxury assets as financial commodities. Maxwell handles non-contentious sales and the financing aspects of art deals. Petra Warrington leads on complex art disputes and transactions.

📈 Top hires for growth:

• In April 2025, the firm appointed Clarissa Levi as Art & Heritage Consultant, a hire that drew industry attention. Levi spent 11 years at Sotheby's as a Senior Director and previously trained at Allen & Overy and worked at Charles Russell Speechlys. Her practice spans ownership and disposal of cultural assets, tax incentives for heritage property, and UK export controls for cultural objects, plugging directly into the tax and succession planning needs of HNW collectors.
• In March 2026, Rebecca Christie joined from Fladgate as a partner spanning both the family and art & luxury teams, creating a dual specialism that bridges two of the firm's most important private client offerings. In October 2024, Elizabeth Scandrett joined to strengthen the contentious side, handling disputes across creative industries.

The team also won Art Law Team of the Year at the Chambers HNW Awards 2024, was shortlisted again for 2026, and was featured in the Spear's Legal Advisers Index 2025.

💡 How to use this in your application