Slaughter and May held on to its traditional position as the UK's most profitable firm last year. Just. The firm posted an average PEP figure of £1.12m, a rise of 6.5 per cent. Partners at the bottom of the equity earned £700,000, while plateau partners pocketed £1.4m.

But Linklaters, which had a standout 2005-06, is piling on the pressure. With a PEP of £1.06m, Linklaters is the only other UK firm with a PEP above the psychologically significant £1m threshold. Meanwhile, turnover at Slaughters jumped by a respectable 10.7 per cent, from £290m to £321m.

Slaughters operates an almost all-equity partnership, as the firm does have a handful of salaried partners in its overseas offices. The lockstep runs for 10 years. Entry partners are awarded 1,000 points, while those at the top of the lockstep have 2,000. Approximately 60 per cent of the firm's partners are currently on 2,000 points.

The 130-partner firm's corporate practice continued to dominate and contributed 51 per cent of total revenue. Deal highlights for the team include advising FTSE100 industrial gases giant BOC Group on its takeover by Germany's Linde and acting for Boots on the disposal of Boots Healthcare International and its merger with Alliance UniChem. The firm also handled the mammoth Shell restructuring, which earned it the Corporate Team of the Year gong at The Lawyer Awards in June.

Slaughters' overseas strategy constrasts starkly with most of its rivals'. It has best friends relationships with Germany's Hengeler Mueller and Uría Menéndez in Spain. In France, meanwhile, Slaughters ceded its 30-year-old Paris office to French best friend Bredin Prat.

The move, which was announced at the end of December 2005, saw Slaughters' French lawyers join Bredin Prat, while the English lawyers maintained a representative English law practice in Paris.