A drop in international mergers and acquisitions (M&A) work and tighter profit margins saw UK law firms achieve less success abroad last year than in previous years, research revealed last week.

A survey by International Financial Services London, which promotes UK industry overseas, showed a £50 million dip in the trade surplus of legal services, to £1.5 billion.


Tony Williams, management consultant at Jomati and former managing partner at Clifford Chance and Andersen Legal, said: 'The amount of cross-border M&A over the past year has been dramatically down, which accounts for a large part of the dip. European M&A activity has been down as well as the US, and so there has been no counter-cyclical effect. But there has also been increasing pricing pressure on the transactions that have happened. Where firms have been billing in the US, the weakness of the dollar will also show a reduction.'


He added: 'But if you looked at what percentage of the international legal spend UK law firms are getting, our market share holds up well.'