The number of lawyers working in FTSE 100 companies is now over 10,000, according to exclusive research from The Lawyer’s new data platform, The Lawyer Market Intelligence (LMI).

The largest FTSE 100 in-house teams rival private practice law firms in terms of fee-earners. HSBC emerges as the company with the largest number of lawyers working in-house. It employs 1,109 legal professionals – on a par with Clyde & Co, the twelfth biggest law firm in The Lawyer UK 200.

The second biggest is Barclays with 900 lawyers, which is equivalent to Bird & Bird, seventeenth in the UK200. Shell, GSK and Vodafone make up the rest of the top five, ranging between 650 and 700 lawyers each.

Four of the top 10 companies are financial institutions, three of them major banks. The banking sector is one of the primary employers of lawyers within the FTSE 100. Barclays. HSBC and Lloyds are listed within the 10 companies with the largest legal teams, while RBS and Standard Chartered employ 214 and 275 lawyers respectively.

The financial sector is a sizeable user of in-house lawyers within the FTSE 100, employing 3,501, or a third of the total.

Top 10 FTSE companies by number of lawyers

Rank FTSE 100 company Number of lawyers
1 HSBC 1,109
2 Barclays 900
3 Shell 700
=4 GSK 650
5 BP 550
6 Vodafone 500
=7 Lloyds Bank 350
=7 British American Tobacco 350
9 Unilever 300
10 Aviva 280

Source: The Lawyer Market Intelligence

For the full LMI FTSE 100 report contact richard.edwards@centaurmedia.com