What is considered a big law firm?

Jan 29, 2023

Written By Panashe Nyadundu

Familiarising yourself with being able to identify the different types of law firms and knowing what is considered a big law firm may be useful to your general knowledge or navigating your next career move. In this article, we help you differentiate between law firms so you can understand what bigger law firms in the UK look like.

Different Firm Sizes

Categorising a law firm by size can be confusing if you do not know what you are looking for. To help keep things standardised, using the UK government’s method of company size categorisation as a basis can be a helpful way to understand law firm sizes in the UK.

Annual turnover is also included in defining business sizes; however, it is easier to find out or estimate how many employees a law firm has than checking the Companies House website for a law firm’s annual turnover.

Small firms

0-49 employees

Medium firms

50- 249 employees

Big firms

250 employees or more

Practice Areas

The practice area of a firm can also indicate how big the firm may be.

Smaller firms typically tend to be private in nature. Whilst the expertise these types of firms may offer can be wide, it is typical for such firms to only offer advisory aid from one angle, i.e. the claimant. This allows small firms to provide expertise specific to their abilities.

Mid-sized firms tend to offer a wider variety of practice areas than small firms. However, the work they do tends to focus on a specific region, rather than across the UK or globally.

Big firms will often have multiple practice areas, and sub-divisions within this that offer expertise to a range of clients, such as individuals, the government and organisations. Deals, clients and work in this category can extend to the wealthiest individuals, highly complex cases and large government plans.

Geographical Location

National

National firms are known for having a multitude of offices nationwide, with a large headquarter in a big city, and sometimes foreign offices. For example, Addleshaw Goddard has six offices spread across Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland, with 17 offices in total around the world.

Big, international operations such as this offer a wealth of expertise to their clientele, which can extend to as many as 10 sectors and much more sub-sectors.

Regional

Regional firms pertain to a firm that operates outside of London and within a particular region (i.e the Midlands). They will then have smaller offices within this region that typically cater to business and client needs within the said area.

Given that they only operate in one region, they are often considered as mid-sized. However, they can also be viewed as large-scale if they are particularly prominent in their region.

High-street firms

Hence the name, these firms are quite literally located on high streets, whether that is in a larger city, a town, or a small city. They may have just one office, or another in a neighbouring city or town, with only a handful of partners. As you may have guessed, these firms can be classified as a small firm by their limited number of employees and their regional speciality.

Practice areas of high-street firms are private at their core. Specialities include: wills and personal injury claims, employment, crime, family law and much more.

Magic Circle Firms

Located in London, and multinational in practice, Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters and Slaughter and May are all included in this set of elite law firms.

If you’re involved in the legal world in any aspect, you’ve probably heard of this prestigious set of firms that dominate the legal market in terms of deals, employee count and annual turnover. Undeniably, these characteristics make these firms so big, given these factors and their incredibly wide sector range.

Becoming a Lawyer