The Rising 50 Lawyers

Matthew Byrne, associate editor

Just outside of the top 100 UK law firms lie those practices eyeing the spots presently occupied. And with an exceptional year for the mid-market, the bigger players can’t afford to rest on their laurels. By Matt Byrne

First, some context. The total value of the 100 firms listed in this edition of The Lawyer Rising 50 – that is, The Rising 50 entrants themselves together with the next 50 best performers (which we are printing for the first time) – is £1.09bn. The total revenue at Clifford Chance for 2005-06 was £1.03bn.

Does that make these firms less interesting than the world’s largest? Hardly. Most of the 50 firms in The Rising 50 (which together have a total value of £677m) would slot straight in to The Lawyer UK 100 Annual Report on other key indicators, such as revenue per partner (RPP) or revenue per lawyer (RPL).

Take Rosenblatt Solicitors. The London corporate finance boutique may only have a turnover of £12m, but its RPP last year was £923,000 – well ahead of far larger firms such as Watson Farley & Williams (£907,000), DLA Piper (£798,000) and Lawrence Graham (£733,000). Ditto Scotland’s private client leader Turcan Connell, which posted an RPP of £911,000 last year.

In fact, a total of eight Rising 50 firms would feature in the top half of The UK 100 if based purely on RPP (including the commodity players Silverbeck Rymer and Golds, which posted market-busting RPP figures of £4.1m and £1.3m respectively), while only nine would fail to make the main list. The figures are purely a reflection of the quality of work that the firms in this turnover bracket are handling year-on-year.See story