New figures have exposed the extent of a rapid consolidation that has wiped out swaths of the personal injury market. A report commissioned by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers revealed that the number of firms receiving more than half their revenue from claims fell by 37% to 442 between 2019/20 and 2024/5.
The number of specialist PI lawyers has also contracted sharply: the number of barristers working in the sector fell 22% to 1,181 between 2019 and 2025; and the number of CILEX members by 43%.
The report quotes figures from the government’s compensation recovery unit showing that PI claims volumes fell to a record low in 2025. Since 2019, the overall total has more than halved to around 413,000, with motor injury and employer liability hardest hit.
Nevertheless, the sector appears to be holding its own financially: in 2025 the market was worth £5.42bn, 5% more than in 2024.
Mike Benner, APIL’s chief executive, said technology has played a huge role in maintaining firms’ profitability and will become bigger still: automating routine tasks, speeding up document review, and modelling predicted outcomes and settlement sums.
But he added: ‘The difficulty is that such technology doesn’t come cheap and that explains the key finding in this report, that the PI market is experiencing continued consolidation.’
The report suggests the PI market is increasingly divided into two camps: private equity-backed national platforms which have deep pockets, and are operationally advanced and highly acquisitive; and high-value boutique specialists working on complex, high-margin work.
Jeff Zindani, of M&A consultancy Acquira, said there are reasons to be positive: ‘This is not a story of terminal decline, but of a market being reorganised around different strengths and different routes to success. For many firms, the challenge is no longer tactical. It is strategic. Firms must make conscious decisions about whether to invest, specialise, partner, merge or exit.’
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