When the senior partners in Ireland’s biggest law firms draw up their Christmas card lists this year, it’s not likely that John Gleeson will feature on them.

In the past year, Gleeson, a barrister, has lured six experienced solicitors from the ranks of the large firms to work for his company Access Legal. By the end of the year, he expects to have ten corporate lawyers working under the Access Legal banner and - critically for the big firms - they will be charging far less for services than clients have come to expect.

Gleeson, who is a son of senior counsel Dermot Gleeson, a former attorney general and former AIB chairman, set up Access Legal last April after seeing an opportunity for a ‘law company’ that was different from the traditional practice structure. His aim was to find ‘‘entrepreneurial solicitors’’ who were looking for a move or for more freedom in their working arrangements.

‘‘We wanted to find the best and the brightest corporate specialists with at least seven years experience," said Gleeson, who described Access Legal as " a franchise for specialist solicitors’’.

The solicitors pay a fixed fee to Gleeson and his business partner, Edel McCormack, who handle all their organisation, administration and billing from the Access Legal office, opposite the Four Courts on Merchant’s Quay in Dublin.

The solicitors all work from their own offices and take home what they earn. Because they don’t have to contribute to the costs of a big practice, they can charge less than they previously did but still make more money than they did before, according to Gleeson.