S&W The Pulse

In conversation with Paul Hodkinson, editor of Legal Week, Head of Professional Practices Giles Murphy discusses the key issues affecting the UK’s top 50 law firms and what law firms could do to improve their resilience as they manage today’s difficult environment. The legal market saw another strong year, with buoyant demand for legal services driving strong revenue and profit growth across the sector. However, with little improvement in lock-up or cash levels, the sector looked vulnerable as it headed into the Covid-19 crisis. We delve into the issues affecting the legal industry: why are efficiency gains proving stubbornly hard to achieve? How can the sector address the problem of lock-up and improve its cash position? Is it too late?We provide in-depth analysis, in association with Legal Week, of law firm LLP accounts for the year 2018-2019. Using recently filed data from Companies House, we look at everything from debt levels to profit margins to partner capital to build robust insight into the health of