Quick stats about the Norwich Legal Market

 

The five biggest firms for their Norwich presence based on “solicitor” or “legal executive” head-counts are:

Birketts
Mills & Reeve
Leathes Prior
Howes Percival
Spire Solicitors

Then the top four practice areas in Norwich, based on profiles, are:

Real estate*
Private client
Dispute resolution
Corporate

(*Real estate includes commercial property, residential property, agriculture and social housing.)

As you would expect, most of the jobs which arise in Norwich do so in these practice areas (and the majority are in the 2-5 year PQE bracket).

Interestingly, two years ago corporate law was ahead of dispute resolution in Norwich, but now dispute resolution has taken 3rd place. This change may be due to growth in dispute resolution, a reduction in corporate law headcount, or other factors like higher pay for corporate lawyers elsewhere in the country.

Other practice areas such as family and employment are much smaller. This means these areas are likely to suffer from candidate shortages.

Overall, the profiles of lawyers are 57% female to 43% male. With these key facts:

At partner level it’s 57% male and 43% female
At senior associate level it’s 61% female and 39% male
At solicitor/associate level it’s 71% female and 29% male

At the junior 0-5 year PQE level, there are twice as many female lawyers, which may have an impact on future partnership ratios.

Female lawyers dominate in the ‘private client’ practice area, while male lawyers make up the majority in corporate law. (This is true at a national level too.)

You can make partner here from as little as 3 years’ PQE. But more typical is from around 10 years’ PQE. There are different trends depending on your practice area e.g. corporate lawyers tend to be made up more quickly than private client lawyers.

As ever if you’re interested in finding out who’s hiring, trends in your practice area or data on your firm, get in touch.

Data source: Pirical 2023.