Given the savaging that Covid-19 has done to our collective sense of time, forgive a quick history lesson on the halcyon days of 2019. Pulling together the LB100 report for the 2018/19 period, Legal Business reflected: ‘After a credible performance, the profession now faces a slowing economy at home and abroad amid mounting unease generated by a government under Prime Minister Boris Johnson hitting an increasingly Trumpian tone on forcing the UK out of the EU.’
Even the most casual reader of that year’s LB100 report would have noted the ominous imagery drawing on Conrad, Coppola and Castro as British institutions that summer buckled under the weight of entrenched discord. The message was clear, leading law firms, which increased revenues by 9% across the LB100 to hit £26.35bn, had performed well but an outlook clouded by a slowing economy, Brexit uncertainty and political instability meant harder times were coming.
