文档介绍:Boosted by booming international financial markets, the City of London has not had it so good since the end of the bonanza in the late 1990s. Basking in double-digit growth rates, London's law firms have both contributed to that ess and benefited from it. The earnings of top City lawyers can now exceed £2m a year.
Having opted to expand and go global ahead of most others, Britain's leading law firms tend to be bigger than their American rivals. Indeed, according to a survey of the world's top 50 law firms, compiled by Legal Business, a British trade paper, five of the world's top six law firms—in terms of turnover—are now British (if DLA Piper, the result of an Anglo-American merger, is included). But they have tended to lag behind in terms of their profitability. That is now changing.
The profit margins of the City's five “magic circle” firms—Clifford Chance, Slaughter and May, Allen & Overy, Linklaters and Freshfields—have soared in recent years and are parable with, if not higher than, those of New York's “white shoe” elite. Slaughter and May, the only one of the five not to have gone global, has the joint second-highest profit margin among the top 50.
Not so long ago, a London surgeon could expect to earn as much as a City lawyer. But even the recent big rises in hospital consultants' earnings pall parison with those enjoyed by London lawyers. At Slaughter and May,