Success, as they say, is relative. The Legal Week US top 50 table, which is now in its fourth year, finds America’s leading firms recording another year of double-digit growth in turnover and profits.
Over the last four years the headline figures have proved remarkably consistent. The annual growth in profits for the top 50 has ranged from a low of 8% for 2002 to a high of 12% for 2004. In comparison, it has been a rollercoaster ride for the UK’s top 50, which battled to maintain their profitability after the dotcom crash. This bears testament to the contrasting markets in which these two sets of firms operate. While UK firms were reeling from the effects of the worldwide transactional slump, their US rivals were powering ahead, fuelled by a surge of domestic restructuring and litigation work. And just as this counter-cyclical income stream began to tail off, the sustained M&A revival kicked in.
