This month’s Signal Disputes is the first part of the 2023 edition of The Lawyer‘s UK Litigation 50 a ranking of the top 50 firms based on the amount of revenue generated by their litigation practices in the UK. The second instalment, which will be published next month, will feature individual firm profiles.
2023 marks five years since the first edition of the UK litigation 50. The five-year comparative data indicates just how much has changed in this rapidly developing market.
Since the first UK Litigation 50 report was published five years ago, the revenue of all the top 50 firms combined has risen from £4.12bn in 2018/19 to £5.48bn, or by 33 per cent, at an average annual rate of 7.5 per cent, while the combined number of contentious partners has grown by 26 per cent, from 2,436 in 2018 to 2022’s 3,071. Back in 2019, the average litigation revenue for a firm in the UK Litigation 50 was £82.4m. That figure surpassed £100m in 2021/22, and reached £110m in 2022/23. Tellingly, in 2019 only 18 firms surpassed that year’s average revenue. This did not change much in 2022, with only 19 firms doing so.
One of the key findings from 2019’s report was that US firms had been unable to dominate the UK market, but their growth would continue incrementally. In many respects, the former remains true, but their growth is starting to pick up pace. Only 10 US firms are in the UK Litigation 50, although three more have joined the top 50 in the past five years. Compare that to the Global Litigation 50, where that fact is reversed, and only about 10 firms are not from the across the pond.
To see the full ranking, an overview of financial performance and headcount growth and more five-year highlights of the UK Litigation 50, read the full report now.
