The predicted comeback year for the UK legal elite instead turned industry trends and conventional wisdom on their head. Legal Business jumps down the rabbit hole and tries to make sense of it all.
‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’ The Red Queen, Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
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Continue reading “LB100: The Top 25 – The world turned upside down”
The City’s mid-tiers defied the critics to achieve market-leading pace through 2015, cementing the gains of recent years. How big an upset can the tortoises deliver?
There are a few simple ideas that define the pecking order in the UK legal industry. The big boys are international, materially larger than the tiers below and two to three times as profitable as their mid-pack cousins.
Continue reading “LB100: The Second Quartile – The first shall be last…”
Specialist practices and focused City firms in the second 50 thrived in what remained an uncertain market.
The second 50 is a hard place for any law firm without a strong claim on their chosen patch. Overall this section of the market saw a flat year despite the support of a relatively upbeat domestic economy and surging property market.
Despite much debate in recent years, social inclusion in the legal profession remains woeful. Are a new range of initiatives the latest diversity fads or steps towards a breakthrough?
Ray Berg, UK managing partner of Osborne Clarke, recalls first getting his foot in the door of the legal profession: ‘I only got work experience because my dad started talking to someone in the back of his cab. He was so proud to say his son was this, that and the other. That someone was the then managing partner at Nicholson Graham & Jones and he said: “Would your son like to do a week’s work experience with us?” That was extremely fortuitous but people without those contacts shouldn’t have to rely on fortune like that.’
Continue reading “Small gestures – can a new wave of social inclusion schemes deliver?”
Regional firms are experiencing mixed fortunes. Can they take advantage of a less London-focused client base?
Regional and national firms dominate the second half of the Legal Business 100 (LB100), but typically they do not enjoy the same success as the London-based firms that also occupy the lower end of the table. This year, 32 firms ranked 51-100 are regional or national law firms based outside London, totalling £1.2bn in revenue from 6,308 fee-earners.
Continue reading “LB100: The Second 50 – The Lion & the Unicorn”
The firms that appear in the Legal Business 100 (LB100) are the top 100 firms in the UK, ranked by gross fee income generated over the financial year 2014/15 – usually 1 May 2014 to 30 April 2015. We call these the 2015 results. Where firms have identical fee incomes, the firms are ranked alphabetically.
An overwhelming majority of firms that appear in the LB100 co-operate fully with its compilation (see ‘Transparency’, right) by providing our reporters with the required information. A limited number of firms choose not to co-operate officially with our data collection process and in these circumstances we rely on figures given to us by trusted but anonymous sources. Continue reading “LB100 2015: Methodology and notes”
