Record turnover for Lovells surprises the City
29 May 2009

The major City firms are starting to announce their results, and they’re looking surprisingly healthy bearing in mind the chronic state of the World economy. 

Lovells' results are impressive, with a record turnover of £531m, up 11% on last year’s stellar performance of £479m. However, despite the business growth, profits were down by 11% - the firm had a redundancy programme to pay for, after all. But it still rates as one of the firm’s best years. Managing Partner David Harris said "given the extraordinary market changes we have seen, we consider our performance to be a pretty respectable result". Talking of respectable, here's a picture of Senior Partner John Young.

Senior partner John Young celebrating Lovells' results at home yesterday*

Eversheds didn't do so well - turnover fell 6% and profits were down nearly 27%. But even this has to be seen as better than expected, given that the firm was in a sufficiently bad way to have to go through three separate redundancy rounds and suspend graduate recruitment. A spokesman for the firm said that the results “represented a satisfactory outcome in the face of very trying market conditions”.

Meanwhile Ashurst has announced a drop in turnover of 7% to £301m. It has yet to reveal its profits. Managing Partner Simon Bromwich said this was a decent result given the market, and that “each of the last six months have been slightly better, so it looks like we’re on the right trajectory”.

Olswang hasn't announced its profits either, but confirmed that turnover fell by just 3.5%. Managing Partner David Stewart said that he was very pleased with the results, particularly given the bath that media and real estate had taken over the last year. "We remain cautious, but with litigation performing strongly and our sector approach producing significant recent new instructions we are confident that we can build on the figures this year."

Most big City firms look set to pull reasonably strong figures out of the hat. While the high cost base of law firms means that even relatively small falls in turnover can have a big impact on profits (see Eversheds above), it seems that the dire predictions of a complete collapse in the legal services market have not yet materialised. So it will be interesting to see how firms justify having made so many junior lawyers redundant.

RollOnFriday’s resident bookie is offering good odds on record turnover at Freshfields, Slaughter and May, Allen & Overy and Linklaters, with revenues down slightly at Clifford Chance and static or dipping by up to 10% at most chasing pack firms**. You read it here first***.

*RollOnFriday cannot fully explain this photograph but it really is John Young, Senior Partner of Lovells.

**RollOnFriday predictions can be wrong as well as right. Generally wrong to be honest.

*** Instructions to The Lawyer and Legal Week: (i) cut, (ii) paste, (iii) thxbai