At just five and a half years old, Sampson Fielding is one of the youngest firms in the category by some distance, a firm many of its mid-tier peers have been operating for 50, 60, even 100 years longer. We sat down with co-founders Ben Sampson and Elliot Fielding to find out how they got here.

Built on friendship, built on relationships

Ben and Elliot met while travelling, over a mutual love of football, golf and, of course, tax, and stayed close for years before launching the firm together in the middle of the pandemic, starting out in a single room in South West London before moves to Mayfair and, this January, to Wigmore Street. Today the firm has 28 people, five other partners, and works with both private clients and corporates across compliance and advisory.

"That friendship was the bedrock of what we wanted to build," they told us. "We both saw things in the same way, so we're kind of aligned on everything we've ever done, and I think that's been a pretty powerful concept for everyone who then comes into the firm, because they have a clear vision of what it is we want to do."

That alignment shows up in how the firm grew. Rather than leaning on juniors to deliver compliance work while partners focused elsewhere, Ben and Elliot did the hands-on work themselves in the early days, and made a deliberate choice to keep hiring senior, experienced people first as the firm scaled.

"Clients cared about the relationship side of the service they were receiving, and they cared that they could trust the advice they were getting was right. So we followed that through into our hiring process: we didn't start hiring juniors who didn't have any experience and were left to fend for themselves. We hired very senior people right from the start."

People first, culture non-negotiable

Everyone at Sampson Fielding works from the Wigmore Street office, every day, a deliberate choice, not a default. It's a stance the founders are candid about, and one they credit with the firm's strong retention and hiring record.

"Intelligent people want to be surrounded by other intelligent people. Once you start encouraging a standard across the firm, people want to be part of it. Good people doing good things, in the right way, that's the mantra, and it's something we've been able to retain throughout."

The leadership team came first

That culture wasn't left to chance. Before recruiting more widely, Ben and Elliot deliberately built out their leadership team through people they already knew and trusted. Their first hire, Jordan Boston, was someone Ben had trained alongside on his ACA course over a decade earlier; he's since been made partner. Next came Lindsay Pester, the partner who had originally trained Ben at his previous firm. Then a senior tax manager Elliot knew well through a close personal connection. Most recently, Craig Jones joined as COO, a non-traditional hire for an accountancy firm, brought in specifically to protect the culture through the firm's continued growth.

"It always goes back to the person first: make sure they fit with the firm and the culture and are aligned with what we're trying to do," the founders explained. "That's always been important to us and will remain so moving forward."

It's also, they believe, why the firm hasn't struggled to attract talent in a market where many practices cite recruitment as their biggest challenge, and why the office-every-day policy hasn't held them back. Being in the room together every day, they argue, is precisely what builds the camaraderie and mentoring that junior staff need to develop quickly, and what senior staff want to be part of.

Where outsourcing and AI fit in

The founders are equally clear-eyed about two of the industry's biggest talking points: outsourcing and artificial intelligence.

On outsourcing, their view is blunt. "I fundamentally disagree with outsourcing," they told us. "I think that's where the industry is generally struggling, because most firms aren't prioritising the human aspects of the job. Success comes from a happy workforce and happy clients, and that doesn't happen by improving your process. It happens by building a genuine relationship, where someone can pick up the phone and get a sensible answer to a sensible question."

That same conviction shapes their view on AI: it has a place, but firmly as a tool in service of people, not a replacement for them. Sampson Fielding have rolled out Claude licences across the whole team.

"AI is very handy as a tool, but only as a tool. I have a general belief that if you think you're at risk from AI, it's probably because you're replaceable, and I don't think anyone in our firm believes they're replaceable. Ultimately it comes down to the personal relationships that you keep. In 2026 we've probably hired more people than we've ever hired in a year, and that has got to come first in any accounting firm. It's used as a tool to make people better at their jobs."

They're equally measured about how far AI can go in compliance work anytime soon. "I think we're a long way off," they said. "AI at the moment lacks context. Two people with similar situations, but subtly different, require different advice, and until AI can fully understand all of that context, including personal choices, it's just not going to produce what a human being can. In twenty years' time that may be different, but I'd caveat that heavily."

It's the same thinking that shapes their approach to growth more broadly. The firm has acquired two practices in the past two and a half years, and the founders point to the reasons the previous partners gave for choosing them over private equity buyers as proof their approach is working: a duty of care to staff and to clients they'd looked after for 20, 30, even 40 years, something a shorter-term investment model doesn't always offer. "Private equity will buy a firm and look to flip it in five to ten years for a return on that investment," they said. "That's a much shorter-term vision than the one we're building towards."

Proud to sponsor the Mid-Tier category

At TaxCalc, we're proud to sponsor the Mid-Tier Firm of the Year category, and it's brilliant to see a firm as young as Sampson Fielding earning its place among firms decades its senior, built on exactly the kind of people-first, relationship-led approach we love to celebrate.

Asked what winning would mean, the founders didn't hesitate: "It would be recognition of the seriously hard work Elliot and I have put in, but also that the team would be genuinely proud. We believe we're the best firm in the country, it would be quite nice to be recognised for that externally too."

We'll be cheering them on at the Practice Excellence Awards, congratulations to Ben, Elliot and the whole team at Sampson Fielding on a very well-deserved nomination.