There was never any doubt that 2018 would prove another good year for US law firms in London coming off what has been a great decade for the breed. But it is only when you start to pull together the numbers that you realise how fast the City legal market is shifting in favour of American entrants. Legal Business has a reputation for being bullish on US firms in London. These numbers indicate that we haven’t been bullish enough. There are now more than 7,000 lawyers working in the London offices of the top 50 largest practices in London. Even stripping out the impact of including the legacy Berwin Leighton Paisner’s City practice, that’s an annual increase of 7%, a startling growth rate and one that is actually accelerating even as many expected investment in London to slow in the face of the UK’s looming exit from the EU.
And the overall numbers obscure just how dramatic that growth has been. Much of the action is coming in the top half of the 50 grouping, especially the ten largest practices that are increasingly settling into their stride in key markets like private equity, white-collar crime/investigations and leveraged finance. The ten largest practices alone made 54 partner hires during 2018.
