LB100 Global Elite – London Stalling

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In its first major overhaul since the introduction of peer groups in 2004, the Global Elite table is only five firms long.

Herbert Smith has transferred to the City International table after exhibiting profitability levels far below the elite group average.

But while Global Elite earnings may combine to provide the highest grossing turnover average in the LB100 (at £1,056m that average tops the billion pound barrier for the first time) growth is resolutely meagre. Indeed Herbert Smith’s 3% rise in revenues would have hit the peer group average exactly.

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LB100 Macfarlanes: Swimming Against The Tide

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At the time of the first LB100, Macfarlanes was three years into a non-exclusive international alliance that included US firm O’Melveny & Myers, Paris-based Simeon & Associés (now part of Lovells), and Germany’s Noerr Stiefenhofer Lutz.

There were offices in Tokyo and Brussels, and indeed Julian Howard, now managing partner of the firm, was the partner in charge of the Tokyo outpost from 1992 to 1997.

Today, the business is a wholly different animal, having entirely bucked the trend and abandoned its alliance and international growth pretensions. In 20 years the firm’s turnover has nevertheless steadily crept in the right direction, from £28m then to £102.2m today, with the only blip being a plunge of more than 15% between 2008 and 2010.

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LB100 Osborne Clarke: From South West to West Coast

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Twenty years ago, Osborne Clarke (OC) had revenues of £11.4m and an average PEP of £97,000. It was a Bristol firm with a very small London office and the origins of an international alliance.

‘Lots of firms have overtaken us,’ says the current managing partner Simon Beswick, ‘but really OC was the first regional firm to come into London and the first regional firm to go into Europe, doing both of those in 1987.’

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LB100 Allen & Overy: Turnover Soars With Globalisation

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Allen & Overy’s worldwide senior partner David Morley remembers doing his first deal for Goldman Sachs as a young partner in the banking group in 1992.

This was a time when the fact that an American investment bank was in London was still big news: the arrival of the US financial institutions, which began at the end of the eighties, shook up the City.

‘I remember a UK corporate client being asked about the difference that Goldman had made in London,’ recalls Morley. ‘He said he used to ring up his merchant bank about a deal and they said they’d come round tomorrow to talk to him. When he rang Goldman, they said they’d be round in half an hour, and they ran.’

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LB 100 Retrospective – All Grown Up

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The LB100 survey is now in its 20th year – what does the data reveal about how the market has changed?

When LB first published the gross fees of the UK’s biggest firms in 1992, it was met with consternation and horror by some partners. ‘It is one thing for the Americans and accountants to get into this sort of thing, but not lawyers,’ one managing partner told us at the time. ‘I don’t think you will get any of the City firms to talk about this sort of thing.’

Another managing partner declared: ‘Anyone who gives you this information will be booted out of the partnership.’

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LB100 2012 – Future Proof

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From merger mania to profit manipulation – the LB100 in 2012 draws on familiar themes from 20 years of law firm financials.

If there’s one thing the last 20 years have taught us at LB, it’s that the legal profession carries on regardless. The UK may have entered into a  double-dip recession despite quantitative easing; the US and a number of European countries may have seen their credit ratings downgraded; M&A may have dried up and the global debt markets may be in stasis, but the UK’s top 100 law firms continue to post record growth and trend-busting profits. The industry has again showed its remarkable resilience and stability.

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Twenty years on and the numbers still add up

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In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected US president; the Maastricht Treaty was signed and Legal Business published the financial data of 35 firms with revenues over £20m. Over the last 20 years, as the information age has developed, total revenues of the 100 largest law firms based in the UK have swelled from £2.7bn to £17.67bn, outperforming the domestic economy.

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LB100 2012 – Behind the Numbers: Profitability Revealed

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Which firms are the most profitable? In this table we blend together all of our profitability measures, including PEP, profit per lawyer and profit margin, to discover which of the top 100 firms are the most profitable.

The 100 firms have been ranked according to their mean rank on all three measurements.

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Growth in LB100 regional peer groups half that of London

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The capital has extended its position as the most buoyant legal market in the UK, with midsize London law firms continuing to outpace their regional rivals, notching up an average 10% increase in organic revenue this year compared to just a 5.5% revenue rise for non-London firms.

The South, North and Scottish regions are among the worst performing markets for LB100 firms this year, with firms in those regions increasing revenue on average by just 1%, 5% and 5% respectively.

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