SCOTLAND'S bigger law firms have seen their average profits fall, according to a major industry survey.
The Law Society of Scotland's Cost of Time survey, compiled from the responses of 185 firms, shows firms with 10 or more partners recorded an average profit per equity partner of £163,000 in 2014.
That was down from the median of £197,000 seen in the prior year and the peak of £223,000 recorded in 2006.
The society pointed out it had seen profits in the bigger firms ranging from £120,000 to £300,000 for last year.
In contrast some smaller firms enjoyed an uptick in their profitability during 2014 with those employing between two and four partners seeing an improvement from £64,000 to £75,000.
However sole practitioners saw their profits fall slightly from £47,000 to £42,000 while firms with between five and nine partners were down from £99,000 to £92,000. However that was still the second best performance in that category since before the start of the financial crisis in 2008.
Across the industry as a whole there was growth from £64,000 to £69,000.
The median salary for salaried partners across all firms was £54,500.
Alistair Morris, president of the Law Society, said: "In general law firms appear to be recovering in the wake of the downturn, although they are yet to reach the same levels of profitability seen in 2008."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article