The 2024 PwC UK Law Firm Survey makes for good reading, as always
One trend caught my eye – UK Profit per Full Equity Partner (PEP), on pages 48 & 49
Whilst the nominal values are interesting, with Top 10 firms’ PEP up 31% from 2019 and 11 – 25 firms breaking £1m for the first time in 2024, the comparison to wider inflation is perhaps more informative
With 2019 rebased to 100 and with CPIH as of April each year shown alongside, the graph below shows that firms are generally keeping PEP abreast of inflation
Which, if you’re a partner, is what matters 🙂
Beneath that headline…
We can see PEP drifting below inflation in 2020 for all firm categories, with bigger firms (top 25) being quicker to adjust their business models in 2021, followed by 26-50 in 2022
11 – 50 firms’ PEP has been lumpy through 2022 to 2024, I’d be interested to see how the improvement in the past 12 months is sustained into 2025 (or not…)
It’s been a tough period for 51 – 100 firms, who have taken the full 5 years to catch up with cumulative inflation. If you’re a partner in one of these firms, you’re unlikely to be feeling 25% richer in 2024 compared to 2019 – more likely you feel much the same, given that inflationary backdrop
Overall, the key levers firms have pulled to achieve this are:
Increasing effective rates, especially for Top 10 firms. There’s clear space between the Top 10 and the rest, but in that space is opportunity for smaller firms to catch up by poaching clients from larger firms at better rates
Pushing utilisation up and capacity down across the board, but challenge how sustainable this is in the longer term, especially in transactional teams that are likely seeing most of the rate growth
11 – 100 firms have increased fee earner : equity partner leverage to around 10 fee earners per partner. Again, question sustainability here – if you’re working fee earners harder, with less chance to become partner, it should be little surprise if those fee earners leave for opportunity elsewhere
Plenty of other bits to digest in the coming days, but PEP jumped out to me as (a) not quite as exciting in real terms as in nominal terms, and (b) somewhat reassuring as to the overall financial health of firms after a challenging few years
If you’re interested in the business of law, I’d encourage folk beyond the boardroom to read it
It’s (as always) a well-researched and presented report and gives a real sense as to what’s going on in UK law firms beyond the numbers
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