“The US firms in London appear to be in a holding pattern,” Ward Beller, the principal of US management consultant Altman Weil, told Legal Week in February last year. “They are not going great, but they are hanging on in there and seeing it through.”
That was then, this is now – and, from an economic point of view, not a great deal has changed. In the 18 months since Legal Week’s last survey of the US law firms in London – and Beller’s comments – deal volume involving UK companies has held relatively steady despite a significant drop from the first to the second quarter of 2004, and has remained broadly in line with the yearly averages of 2003 both in terms of volume and value.
