Commercial Risk Management Boosts Top Solicitors’ Profits

Posted by Pam Grover-Mitchell on May 2, 2012 | Be the First to Comment

Law firms at the top and bottom of the Lawyer U.K. Top 100 get the best value from their investment in risk and compliance. Costs in these groups are lower compared to the number of services provided. While insurance premiums are slightly larger for Top 20 firms than for any other category, this simply reflects the higher levels of cover purchased by the larger firms.

For firms in the middle of the Top 100, the news is less promising.

Although Risk Management and Compliance (RM&C) teams in the Top 21-40 firms generally provide the best service and partner support, they do not enjoy the same economies of scale as the largest firms, and cost by far the most to run. 

Top 41-60 firms fare worst: although their per-partner RM&C spend is nearly as great as that of the Top 21-40 firms, the range of services their RM&C teams provide only slightly exceeds those at the bottom. 

These are the primary findings of research conducted by Lockton’s Professions team among Top 100 firms in September 2011 to create the profession’s first Risk and Compliance Index (R+CI).

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Solicitors Professional Indemnity—U.K.

Posted by Brian Boehmer on November 15, 2011 | Be the First to Comment

Insurance premiums for U.K. law firms have increased significantly in the past few years. Firms extensively engaged in those sectors of the market most exposed to negligence claims—such as conveyancing and probate—tend to pay higher premiums in view of their greater risk exposure. Around 60 percent of claims, for example, arise from conveyancing work, something to which we will be returning below.

Smaller firms have been proportionately harder hit by rising premiums. Firms with between one and three partners are now paying as much as 5 percent of gross fee income for their professional indemnity insurance. Whilst firms with four to five partners paid a smaller proportion of gross fee income—around 3.5 percent on average—they saw premiums rise by 8.5 percent, and firms with six to ten partners, which pay less again proportionately at 2.7 percent of gross fee income on average, saw a massive 16 percent increase in premiums.

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