UK Legal Services Market Report 2025

The fifteenth annual edition of the report provides a unique detailed market review and analysis of the UK legal services market, including corporate law, conveyancing, family law, employment, personal injury and wills and probate. The report considers legislative background, recent market developments and drivers, market structure, market size and trends with historical volume and value data, market segmentation by key practice area with volume and value data, the key players and future market developments. 

Key Highlights

• In 2024 the legal services market was valued at £51.9bn increasing by 10.1% at current prices on the 2023 value.

• Market value growth comes at the same time as law firm numbers continue their downward trend. Between December 2019 and December 2024 almost 1,100 law firms have gone from the law firm population. Over the same period, the number of solicitors with practising certificates has increased by 14%, equivalent to an additional 21,000 individuals.

• Consumer law sectors have taken the brunt of the decline in law firms as consolidation has increased in many practice areas.

• 2023 was something of a watershed with much more private equity investment in the sector than in previous years but the role taken by private equity has jumped again in 2024. Of all the mergers and acquisitions since the last report an estimated 25% involved either new investments by private equity businesses or private-equity backed law firms. This is an increase from 20% in 2023.

• Legal advice for business and commercial matters (including commercial property) now accounts for 51% of the value of the total UK legal services market (50% in 2023). 

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  The core consumer law market value was estimated at £19bn in 2024 and, despite its weak growth in recent years, the largest segment is still personal injury/accident/medical negligence work valued at £4.4bn. Family law and employment law are the next largest segments valued at £3.4bn and £3.7bn respectively. “Other legal services” account for the remaining £5.9bn and key markets here include immigration and intellectual property.  

• The market value growth forecast is 8.1% for 2025.

The latest forecasts are the most optimistic for some time with the likelihood of most legal practice areas experiencing improved growth in 2025. As in previous reports the exception remains the personal injury market where motor claims continue to fall. There has been some growth in clinical negligence claims. For the first time in two years the forecast is also predicting good growth in the residential conveyancing market although this practice area is the one where there is still the possibility of serious bumps along the way: interest rates are likely to continue to fall albeit only slowly but uncertainty over inflation trends and where price increases will be in a few months