It was a pleasure to participate in the dinner to HM Judges and remind the UK Government and legal community of the City Corporation support for legal services. It also provided an opportunity to hear from the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor, all in all it’s a positive outlook for recognition of legal service!
It also gives cause to share some of the City Corporation support, and the report commissioned by LegalUK that examines the value of English law published in October 2021. The report demonstrated that English law’s value to the economy and business in particular extends well beyond its return to the legal sector and underpins hundreds of trillions of pounds of global trade. It also highlights opportunities for the UK to promote English Law as the global standard in new areas of the global economy including sustainable finance, fintech and cryptoassets.
The City Corporation is working closely with the wider professional services sector to promote new innovations in the delivery of legal services. Including support to government through LawtechUK and the City Corporation’s own Lawtech Sounding Board. The work carried out through these forums promotes the UK’s long-term competitiveness as a global hub for legal innovation.
We are also investing in the physical infrastructure like the Salisbury Square Development, designed by Eric Parry Architects, which will house a flagship legal facility for Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), a new state-of-the-art headquarters for the City of London Police and a commercial building.
This will aid the Professional and Business services (PBS) sector, including legal services, which contributes significantly to the UK economy, accounting for £238.4 billion of Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2021. The value of PBS exports in the same period totalled £117 billion, contributing to a £42 billion trade surplus, while the sector as a whole supports 4.9 million jobs.
I’m proud to be part of the legal services sector which accounts for 365,000 jobs, of which two-thirds are based outside of London. The sector contributes £29.6 billion GVA to the UK economy. The UK is the largest legal services market in Europe (valued at £36.8bn in 2019) and is second only to the US globally. It accounts for a third of Western European legal services fee revenue and around 7% of global legal services fee revenue (which totalled about $713bn in 2020).
