| Turnover: | £321.2m |
| Profit per equity partner: | £1.12m |
| Revenue per lawyer: | £558,000 |
| Total number of lawyers: | 576 |
With an average profit per equity partner of £1.12m, Slaughter and May is the only UK representative in the top 10 of the most profitable firms in the world:
and small wonder, considering its premium status for M&A work and its tiny international overheads.
Like Cravath Swaine & Moore, Slaughters, which still dominates the FTSE100, has continued to pursue a resolutely independent approach to global coverage. However, independence does not preclude relationships. Over the past five years, Slaughters has simultaneously downsized its own network, but bolstered its 'best friends' programme.
The UK firm is closest to elite German outfit Hengeler Mueller, but over the course of 2005-06 ramped up its relationships with its other best friends. In Brussels it recently moved in with Hengeler, French firm Bredin Prat, Italian firm Bonelli Erede Pappalardo and Spanish firm Uría & Menéndez. The five firms share client information and operate an increasingly integrated M&A offering, although clients of one firm are always free to choose others not part of the best friends' club.
And the five have also toured Central and Eastern Europe to develop relationships with leading independent firms in Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Slaughters has worked on an ad hoc basis with Warsaw-based Wardynski & Partners and Prague-based Glatzová & Co.
Slaughters' two most notable developments were in France and in China. In France it off-loaded much of its French business to best friend Bredin Prat, keeping only its two English law partners in Paris. Other partners left for Debevoise & Plimpton and Berwin Leighton Paisner. Slaughters' French law practice had long been a historical anomaly, not only because it practised a law other than English, but because it also focused on financing work, unlike the corporate law bias of its home jurisdiction.
China has more recently been a focus. Earlier this year the firm decided to send a partner to its long-established Hong Kong office with a specific brief to develop closer ties with its existing best friends in China, particularly Haiwan Law Firm, Jun He Law Offices and King & Wood.
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