Legal 500 UK editor Georgina Stanley on the headline data and what’s new in this year’s guide
With thousands of distinct rankings for both law firms and individual lawyers, The Legal 500 UK Solicitors Guide 2021 is now live on legal500.com, despite the global pandemic meaning the entire thing was researched and edited remotely.
The guide showcases the very best of the UK commercial legal market, with months of extensive research resulting in definitive rankings of the leading firms and lawyers practising law in the UK right now.
More than 1,100 UK and international firms feature in this year’s guide, which includes nearly 10,000 separate rankings. More than 400 of these firms have achieved at least one top-tier ranking, meaning they are offering the highest-quality advice on the most complex matters, as evidenced by the work contained in their submission forms, backed up by the views of their clients and peers in the market.
In total, there are 2,200 tier 1 rankings in the guide, of which nearly 700 are in London.
Of course, every firm ranked in our guide is recommended for the quality of their practice and lawyers, but those that have secured top-tier rankings really must be at the very top of their game, which is why we now have smaller, more exclusive top tiers for some areas, as we look to tighten the quality at the top end of our rankings – particularly in core City areas.
What’s new in the guide this year
As ever, this year’s guide features a number of new sections. Most notably, London houses nearly 200 brand new rankings this year, the majority of which are in our new industry focus section.
In an attempt to mirror the sector-specific teams in place across many firms, these cross-practice rankings identify the firms offering the best targeted advice across key business sectors, such as life sciences and healthcare, TMT and retail and consumer. We have also introduced a new international business reorganisations category to recognise the firms advising on large-scale, post-acquisition reorganisations and non-distressed restructurings – a category that lends itself to large firms with a broad geographic spread.
Significantly, as part of our ongoing bid to improve quality and ensure that we are doing a better job of comparing like-with-like in an often-crowded legal market, we have also split our London commercial litigation rankings in two this year, given the huge number of firms practising in this area. The new premium and mid-market tables give the rankings more room to breathe and better enable firms of all shapes and sizes the chance to shine.
As always, the rest of the UK remains a fundamental part of The Legal 500, with more than 5,000 non-London rankings offering unparalleled insight into all of the key markets across the country. It is for this reason that we will also shortly be unveiling our new national commercial disputes rankings.
In total, more than 10,000 individual lawyers have been ranked as either leading individuals, next generation partners or rising star associates, with more than half of these based outside of the capital.
The winners
In a UK legal market valued at roughly £37bn, and with London accounting for just under half of all rankings, it stands to reason that when it comes to the firms to have secured the most rankings, the winners will be those with a broad presence across the UK. This is true whether looking at the number of rankings across all tiers, or just those highly coveted tier one rankings.
Looking at the UK as a whole, Pinsent Masons is once again the firm with the most tier one rankings, with Eversheds Sutherland, DLA Piper, CMS and Mills & Reeve rounding out the top five, all of which have at least 40 tier one rankings.
This line-up is replicated when looking at all rankings, where Pinsents tops the list with 164 rankings across all of the UK, while Shoosmiths swaps in for Mills & Reeve in fifth place, with 115 rankings across the UK.
Looking at London, however, the numbers show a greater degree of variance, as the Magic Circle and other leading City firms dominate the top-tier rankings by volume, even if their overall practice spread may be narrower.
Herbert Smith Freehills tops the table for most overall London rankings with 73, followed by CMS, Pinsents, DLA Piper and Hogan Lovells.
When looking only at tier one rankings, however, Linklaters is in first place with 32 such rankings, followed by Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, Herbert Smith Freehills and CMS.
Interestingly, despite the significant progress US firms have made in the City in specific areas, such as private equity, disputes and many areas of finance, their targeted approach to growth means they have yet to enter the top ten by either number of London rankings or number of tier one rankings. Aside from international firm Baker McKenzie, the only non-UK firms in the top ten tables are those that have carried out transatlantic tie-ups.
What’s next
We’re going to be offering analysis on various different aspects of the rankings, including our progress when it comes to recognising the achievements of women in law (spoiler alert – in 30 of our key London practice areas at least 30% of ranked individuals are female) over the coming months, but please do go to legal500.com to see the latest UK guide in full.
As always, we’re keen to ensure we have a dialogue with firms throughout the year so please do get in touch if you have ideas for other practice areas we should be looking at or other issues we should be considering, as well as ideas for how we could improve BAME representation in our rankings.
Guidelines for the 2022 guide (which will publish around this time next year) will be published online around late November this year.
georgina.stanley@legalease.co.uk
ben.wheway@legalease.co.uk
The new UK edition of The Legal 500 is out now.
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