Employment rises 7% at top 20 legal firms

Employment rates of solicitors at the country’s top 20 legal firms grew by 7%, or 127, last year, confirming a strong year for the largest legal practices.

According to figures collated by the Law Society and published in the current edition of the Law Society Gazette, the top 20 firms represent only 1% of the State’s law firms but employ 22% of solicitors.

The top 20 firms employ 1,983 solicitors of the total 8,947 with practice certificates at the end of last year.

Law Society director general Ken Murphy yesterday said the 20 largest firms operate “in a completely different market from the other 99%” of firms.

He said the number of solicitors’ practice certificates for the profession as a whole grew by 1.5% during the same period that the 20 firms’ certificates increased by 6.8%.

“Small firms continue to hang on by their fingernails and hope for any crumbs of the improvement they are hearing about but not experiencing,” he said.

Mr Murphy pointed out that 18 of the 20 firms are based in Dublin, where the economic recovery has taken place to a larger extent than the rest of the country.

He said that “the very biggest legal firms source much if not most of their fee income from international — indeed multinational clients — rather than Irish ones and therefore contribute significantly to Ireland’s income as a country”.

The figures show that the numbers employed by the top six firms total 1,247, with the No 1 practice being Arthur Cox, where the number of solicitors increased from 246 to 258.

The figures show that 43% of firms have just one solicitor, with 82% of firms employing three solicitors or less.