Category: Legal Business 100 2019

On paper, an 11% jump in average revenue to £135.5m for the second 25 looks like a great leap forward from last year’s 5% increase to £122.6m, and this rate of growth compares favourably to the top quartile’s 9% hike to £830.7m. But as usual the figure must be taken with a pinch of salt.

Tempering excitement that the group is outstripping the top 25, Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD)’s transatlantic merger has inflated revenue and catapulted it into the top tier, squeezing out last year’s top-25 entrant Fieldfisher. Swapping WBD for Fieldfisher means that around £140m is artificially added to the £3.39bn total revenue of the group. Without it, average turnover would be around £130m – a more muted 6% increase. Continue reading “LB100 Second 25: A brooding gloom in sunshine”

While the UK lurches through a Brexit drama entirely of its own making, mid-market and boutique London-based firms have focused on diversifying their services or using their unique offerings to differentiate themselves from the pack.

The combined turnover for the 18 City firms that sit in the second 50 of this year’s Legal Business 100 (LB100) is £839.7m, an increase of 8%. Average revenue increased 15%, reaching £46.7m. But, inevitably, the top-line growth of the firms in this group is distorted by some sizeable merger activity. Two of those firms have seen large jumps in revenue and headcount: Gordon Dadds, which after acquiring a large chunk of Ince & Co in 2018 and following its initial public offering (IPO) in 2017 – has seen turnover jump 68% from £31.2m to £52.6m under its new Ince branding (see case study). Bircham Dyson Bell, which merged with Reading stalwart Pitmans in December 2018, saw turnover climb from £33.7m to £52m as a result – a spike of 54%. With that level of artificial top-line growth, profit levels are hard to sustain. A 4% growth in the number of equity partners across the group has contributed to average profit per equity partner (PEP) only moving up 3% from £416,000 to £427,000. Continue reading “LB100 Second 50 – City and Boutique: The adventurers and the settlers”

Smaller regional and national firms have gained ground on their London rivals in this year’s Legal Business 100 (LB100) after years of the productivity gap widening in favour of the City. And, as some of the strongest performers from the 32 regional firms in the 51-100 bracket have shown, a big part of the shift has come from a growing trend of partnering up with law’s global elite to effectively provide northshoring outposts for blue-chip clients.

Following a muted period and just 1% growth last year, the group’s collective revenue rose a solid 7% to £1.36bn in 2018/19, for an average revenue of £42.4m. The productivity per capita at regional firms, traditionally weaker than London counterparts, also grew where City firms lagged this year, closing a gap that had been steadily widening. Revenue per lawyer climbed 9% to £197,000, compared to an almost flat £267,000 in London. Profit per lawyer stayed flat at £38,000, against £78,000 in the City, which was down 6%. Profit per equity partner (PEP), however, slid 5% to £339,000. Continue reading “LB100 Second 50 – Regional focus: Crawling on a razor”