UK Legal Services Market Report 2026

All Core Practice Areas Showing Some Growth But Consolidation Continues

The fourteenth annual edition of this 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:

• UK legal services market revenue increased by 6.1% in 2025 at current prices.
• Consolidation has been a feature of most legal sectors in recent years and, by the end of 2025, law firm numbers in England and Wales had fallen below 9,000, measured by firms regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Between December 2020 and December 2025 over 1,100 law firms have gone from the law firm population.
• A growing private equity presence in the UK legal services market has been a continuing theme in the last year. Of all the UK mergers and acquisitions since the last report an estimated 31% involved either new investments by private equity businesses or private-equity backed law firms. This is an increase from 25% in 2024 and just 20% in 2023.
• The largest practice area is legal advice for business and commercial matters (including commercial property) accounting for 51% of the value of the total UK legal services market.
• The largest segment in the consumer legal services market is personal injury/accident/medical negligence work valued at £4.6 billion: after years of underperforming this sector is showing some limited signs of improvement. Family law and employment law are the next largest segments valued at between £3bn and £4bn respectively. Wills and probate legal advice is the next largest.
• All core practice areas in both the B2B and B2C markets are expected to show some growth in 2026 with the weakest consumer law segments - personal injury and residential conveyancing - likely to register improved performance in the next year.