‘There is a real mismatch in how gloomy the economy feels and how busy the legal professional feels,’ observes Deborah Finkler, Slaughter and May’s managing partner. ‘We’re incredibly busy and it wouldn’t surprise me that in the similar conversations you’re having with other managing partners, they will say the same. There is just a lot of work.’

When our 2021 Legal Business 100 (LB100) report was published, the profession was riding high on the back of booming deal flow that saw profits and revenues surge to previously unmatched levels. Fast forward 12 months, and the economic outlook is very different. Spiralling inflation, interest rate hikes and the macroeconomic issues resulting from Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine have made discussions of ‘softening in the market’ commonplace. Continue reading “LB100: Overview – Turning tides”

Shifts that started with the financial crash galvanised in the decade that followed. Predictions of the rise of US firms were hastened by the reputational demise of banking clients and the acceleration of the private equity market. ‘Clients that were niche pre-financial crisis – the likes of Blackstone, KKR and Carlyle – became the successors of Wall Street. The shift from public capital to private capital helped the US firms. They tracked that change and broke open the market,’ recalls Sebastian Prichard Jones, senior partner of Macfarlanes.

This shook the Magic Circle pedestal. ‘The original Magic Circle no longer had the grip on the market. Instead, the market became broader, more open and no longer concentrated on the FTSE and the investment banks, making it a more interesting and diverse market for firms like ours,’ adds Prichard Jones. Continue reading “30 years of LB100 – 2012-22: Don’t look now”

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Continue reading “Legal Business 100 2022 – contents”