The UK’s 100 largest law firms generated revenue of £33.7bn between them in 2023. And they are of course the sector’s main employers. Firms ranked 101 to 200 – estimable though they may be – generated £2bn.
How the heavyweights run their businesses weighs equally heavy on how the profession is perceived and therefore its wider reputation. That’s just how it is.
For that reason alone, PwC’s latest top-100 survey is well worth a few minutes of your time. As much for the questions that it raises as the impressive granularity of its statistics. There’s an awful lot more going on in the numbers than was reflected in the headline datum seized upon by the Financial Times and indeed the Gazette (the top 10 are charging 40% more than they did five years ago).
Take the report’s diversity data. It has become a truism that the yawning gender gap at partner level is closing at a reasonable clip within this elite echelon. In fact, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Surprisingly – perhaps shockingly – in the top 51-100 band, female representation at full equity partner level actually declined between 2023 and 2024, falling 1.4 percentage points to 27.2%. On current trends, nothing approaching parity is ever going to happen. (If I may be facetious for a moment, this cohort is on track not to have any women partners at all in another quarter century or so.)
At the top 10, which talk a good game on gender, the outlook is better. They have seen the biggest rise this year, of 2.8 percentage points on a like-like basis to 29.8% women. Give it another decade or so, perhaps.
Firms ranked 11-50 posted a modest rise of about 1 percentage point (30 years-ish to parity).
There are many other gobbets in the PwC report worth interrogating, but space forbids. Here’s one more. Much is written about hefty pay hikes for gilded newly qualifieds – but they do seem to be earning them. NQs logged 139 more chargeable hours in 2024 than in 2023 on average, an 11% rise. And almost all the top-100 still prioritise chargeable hours when calculating bonuses.
What does this mean for the much-touted wellbeing agenda?
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