The London table in The Lawyer UK 100 Annual Report is the only place where UK-domiciled and international firms can be meaningfully compared.

For more details on the international firms’ financial performances, see Dearbail Jordan’s report. But by stripping out all these firms’ overseas revenues, you can get a sense of City market share – and it’s clear that the US firms are continuing to pick up an ever greater proportion of London business.

For purposes of consistency, we class international firms as those practices with their headquarters, or the bulk of their business, outside London. It’s not always easy to compare like with like, because some London offices of US firms account over a different time period – calendar year-end, rather than April year-end for the UK firms. It means that the figures for US firms will not reflect the uptick in transactional activity which fuelled UK firms’ last quarter, a detail which may mask the progress of many US firms in London.

The majority of firms in the London table reported roughly static turnover, and a handful actually had lower billings for the 2003-04 period. On these trends, Clifford Chance could lose its position as London’s biggest law firm. It slipped 3 per cent, from £398m in London to £386m, though revenue per partner (RPP) stayed pretty much the same at £1.69m. Linklaters added half a million to its London turnover on a marginally higher RPP of £1.96m, compared with the previous year’s £1.9m. The gap between Clifford Chance and Linklaters has now narrowed to a mere £7.4m compared with the £20m difference last year.

After Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s annus horribilis in 2002-03, when Germany comprehensively outperformed London, it stopped the rot in UK revenue terms. London turnover was up 3 per cent, from £330m to £341m – the biggest increase of the big four in the London table.

The big four – Allen & Overy (A&O), Clifford Chance, Freshfields and Linklaters – totalled almost £1.5bn in 2002-03, representing 37.4 per cent of the top 30. A&O, Clifford Chance and Linklaters have Freshfields to thank for keeping up the magic circle’s share of the market. This year their market share slipped just a fraction, to 37 per cent of the top 30 (and 33 per cent of the top 40). The growth is coming from firms elsewhere, notably a clutch of mid-sized and international practices.

Norton Rose had the biggest increase in London revenues, up 18 per cent, from £126m to £135m, and with a solid RPP of £1.07m. Perhaps the obsession of growing its overseas practice (in three years the proportion of its lawyers based abroad has risen from 18 per cent to 46 per cent) has blinded many to the strength of Norton Rose’s London business.

But there were no surprises among the best London performers. The usual mid-size suspects such as Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), DLA, Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw and Nabarro Nathanson all saw turnover rise by around 10 per cent. Each firm had a different driver for its increase: corporate and finance for BLP, corporate for Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw, projects and real estate for Nabarros and commercial, regulatory and IT for DLA.

Olswang and Addleshaw Goddard – both newcomers in the table – are there by dint of merger or bolt-on. Of the US firms, White & Case recorded one of the most impressive results. Its London office revenues shot up to £51.9m, putting it 29th in the table, but its RPP, at £1.27m, is nowhere near as good as those of its US competitors. Surprisingly, one might have expected Sidley Austin Brown & Wood to turn in a better RPP performance than £1.4m, although its appearance in the table underlines its growing visibility in finance.

After a stellar year in 2002-03, Lovells was affected badly by the drop-off in corporate work. It suffered the largest decrease of any firm in London, down
8 per cent, from £240m to £220m. Luckily for Lovells, the rest of the international network made up the difference.

Yankees doing dandy
In 2002-03, five of the top 30 were US/international: Baker & McKenzie, Dechert, Mayer Brown, Shearman & Sterling and Weil Gotshal & Manges. Dechert has dropped 10 places this year because of its uninspiring 11 per cent plunge in turnover to £42.5m. US contenders for the keys to the City now also include Latham & Watkins, Jones Day, White & Case, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, Sullivan & Cromwell and Sidley Austin Brown & Wood.

Shearman has become a fixture on the City scene and has grown consistently over the last four years. Over a decade of steady and organic expansion, and with no mergers, it has now become the largest London office of any firm – and, unlike White & Case, it has not fallen victim to pricing pressures. White & Case may be catching Shearman on London turnover, but RPP tells a different story – Shearman partners each bill an average of £1m more than White & Case in London.

Spookily, Jones Day, Latham and Weil Gotshal all turn over exactly the same, £50m – but again, RPP differs markedly. Jones Day manages £962,000, but Weil Gotshal and Latham rake in £2m and £2.1m per partner respectively.