Matt is The Lawyer’s deputy editor. He has a particular focus on the US legal market. He also leads many of The Lawyer’s market reports, including the UK 200.
Now the dust has settled on UK firms’ financial results season it should be obvious who the winners and losers were in 2022/23, right? Firms with the highest PEP or revenue are nestling snugly in the former camp, those lower down are populating the latter. But ask any law firm leader and they’ll most likely […]
Few firms have had their finances scrutinised more publicly over the past five years than DWF. Indeed, not that many have seen more change either. Back in March 2019, the firm raised nearly £100m in the largest legal market IPO to date. This month, private equity business Inflexion Private Equity Partners completed its take-private of […]
Osborne Clarke is considering increasing partner capital to help fund the accelerated tax payments necessitated by HMRC’s basis period reforms. The firm is understood to be reviewing the level of partner capital it currently has in its UK LLP to assess if it is sufficient both for tax payment purposes and to help fund investments […]
Clients could soon demand a share of the financial benefits brought about by generative artificial intelligence, with so-called ‘gainshare’ deals that include discounts in bills likely to become more prominent across the legal sector. Gainshare arrangements are best known in the technology industry where the software underpinning deals can improve markedly during the lifetime of […]
Nothing could have emphasised the continuing relevance of London to the global legal market more than the events of this summer at Kirkland & Ellis and Paul Weiss. The gargantuan level of investment that New York elite firm Paul Weiss ploughed into its tiny (until now) City outpost is the biggest vote in favour of […]
Generative AI and its likely impact on the legal market has been one of the themes of 2023 but as we close in on Q4, at least we can all take solace in the fact that substantive structural change is years away. Right? Well, maybe. This year’s UK 200 report, available now on the City […]
Macfarlanes this week pushed the button on its roll-out of generative AI tool HarveyAI, following the largest pilot ever carried out in the history of the firm. Around 15 per cent of Macfarlanes’ fee-earning population across every practice area and all levels of seniority spent time this June using the tool. The results were then […]
As tie-ups continue apace in the Scottish legal market, there are still a few staunch independents that have all reported revenue rises over 2022/23. We dig a little deeper into their progress. Burness Paull and Shepherd & Wedderburn are among the firms to have reported revenue growth in the past financial year, with both steering […]
Few sectors have faced as much change in recent years as commercial real estate. In particular, the way offices are now used looks radically different from only a few years ago. The pandemic emptied them, changing workers’ lives potentially forever. ESG-related demands have seen them ripped apart in a bid to meet current needs. Soaring […]
Scottish firms Morton Fraser and MacRoberts are going ahead with one of the longest-discussed mergers in the history of the Scottish legal market, The Lawyer can exclusively reveal. The deal is broadly seen as a merger of equals, at least in terms of revenue size. In last year’s The Independents UK 200 report, Morton Fraser […]
In this week’s edition: Womble Bond Dickinson invests in UK real estate, Penningtons approaches a “year of strategy”, while Fieldfisher issues a call to action.
House of Brands copycats stalk Shakespeares’ strategy Shakespeare Martineau is a bit complicated to describe these days. It’s now the largest constituent part of Ampa, a ‘House of Brands’ which also includes South East firm Mayo Wynne Baxter and a bunch of other legal and non-legal services. All partners are members of Ampa’s equity rather […]