About 86 % of Welsh law firms, in 2021, had less than 4 partners (321 out of a total 373 private practice firms), 11% had between 5 and 10 partners, while only 3% had more than 11 partners (and none more than 80). 11 The overall size of Welsh law firms is small: according to Jomati report 12 , in 2019 43 % of Welsh law firms employed 10 solicitors or less and only around 18% employed 50 or more people. Around 56% of law firms in Wales reported having an annual turnover of £500,000 or less. 13 Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) data provided to the Commission on Justice in Wales for the “Justice in Wales for the people of Wales” report show that, as of 2019, there were 713 law firm offices in Wales, 436 being ‘head offices’ or firms with only one office (39 of which also had an office in England). Therefore, it is possible to estimate that around 10-15 % of Welsh law firms currently provide legal services outside of Wales, while most of the sector remains focused on the national market, a factor that is also correlated to the small size of the average Welsh law firm. According to The Legal 500 14 , Hugh James, Capital Law, Acuity Law, Geldards LLP, Blake Morgan LLP and Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP are among the leading law firms in Cardiff. While Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP and Blake Morgan have Welsh roots, having formed through mergers involving a Welsh law firm (respectively, Philips & Buck and Morgan Cole), the other law firms listed above were founded in Wales and retain their headquarters in Wales, despite their expansion to England and beyond. Despite being home to many commercially focused firms, the top three practice areas in Wales, as of 2019, were residential conveyancing, wills, trusts and tax planning, and family/matrimonial. 15 The geographical distribution of law firms in Wales is uneven. Data collected for the Jomati report indicate that, in 2019, over 60% of law firms were registered as working across south Wales, 20% in west Wales, 14% in north Wales, and only 5% in mid Wales. 16 This is a long-standing characteristic of the Welsh legal sector, already identified and researched in the 1990s 17 , which has led to the characterisation of legal services in rural Wales as “fragile”. 18 This fragility was further evidenced by the impact of COVID-19 and the ensuing recession, which overwhelmingly affected sole practitioners (-22.8 % between March 2020 and April 2023) 19 and resulted in a contraction of the number of law firms in Wales, from 387 in 2020 to 373 in 2021, a decrease largely caused by the closure of 11 high street firms (having fewer than 4 partners). 20 11 Law Society (n 6), 27. 12 Jomati report (n 3). 13 Ibid, 12. 14 The Legal 500, “Legal Market Overview”, available at https://www.legal500.com/c/wales/. 15 Jomati report (n 3), 14. 16 Ibid, 13. 17 See C. Harding and J. Williams (eds.), Legal Provision in the Rural Environment: Legal Services, Criminal Justice and Welfare Provision in Rural Areas (University of Wales Press, 1994). 18 A. Franklin and R.G. Lee, “The Embedded Nature of Rural Legal Services: Sustaining Service Provision in Wales”, (2007) 34(2) Journal of Law and Society 218, 224. 19 According to the SRA, there were 2,143 sole practitioners across England and Wales in March 2020 and 1,655 in April 2023. See Solicitors Regulation Authority, “Breakdown of solicitor firms”, available at https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/research- publications/regulated-community-statistics/data/solicitor_firms/. 20 Law Society (n 6) and Law Society, Trends in the solicitors' profession: annual statistics report 2020 (22 March 2022), available at https://prdsitecore93.azureedge.net/-/media/files/topics/research/annual-statistics-report-2020-april-2022.pdf.
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