The Legal Economy in Wales
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The Legal Economy in Wales Guto Ifan Canolfan Llywodraethiant Cymru, Prifysgol Caerdydd Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University MAY 2019 The Legal Economy in Wales Guto Ifan Wales Governance Centre Cardiff University Preface About us The Wales Governance Centre is a research centre that forms part of Cardiff University’s School of Law and Politics undertaking innovative research into all aspects of the law, politics, government and political economy of Wales, as well the wider UK and European contexts of territorial governance. A key objective of the Centre is to facilitate and encourage informed public debate of key developments in Welsh governance not only through its research, but also through events and postgraduate teaching. About this project Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre launched the Justice and Jurisdiction project in July 2018. It brings together an interdisciplinary group of academic researchers consisting of political scientists, criminologists, constitutional law experts and political economists to investigate the operation of the legal and justice system in Wales. The project is funded by a combination of the Economic and Social Research Council, the Welsh Government and Cardiff University. As well as producing high quality academic outputs, the project will generate a series of reports intended to inform the work of Commission on Justice in Wales as well as encourage an informed public debate on the organisation and operation of the legal and justice system in Wales. Whilst the research team continues to benefit from comments and suggestions from our external partners, the programme itself has been conceived of and is being delivered wholly independently of them. About the author Guto Ifan is a Research Associate at the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University. [email protected] Wales Governance Centre Cardiff University 21 Park Place Cardiff CF10 3DQ www.cardiff.ac.uk/wales-governance-centre 3 Contents 1. Introduction 5 2. The size of the legal economy in Wales 6 2.1 Legal services firms in Wales 6 2.2 Employment and earnings in legal services in Wales 10 2.3 Legal education in Wales 14 2.4 Gross Value Added from legal activities in Wales 16 3. Cross-country and regional comparisons 18 4. Legal services across cities 22 5. Conclusion 27 Sources 28 Annex 29 4 1 Introduction The legal services sector plays an important part in a functioning economy. Its services are accessed by consumers, impacting on living standards and access to justice directly. It is used by businesses as an intermediate good, affecting the productive health of businesses and the economy. The provision of legal services in general also underpins the integrity of a jurisdiction. In the case of Wales, devolution has created the need for adequate legal expertise to successfully service the development of a distinct jurisdiction. This report details the available data on the legal sector in Wales, to analyse its size, structure and interactions with the rest of the Welsh economy and beyond. The strength of the Welsh legal economy will also be assessed in comparison with the other countries and regions of the UK. Where data is available, the report analyses legal services across local authority areas in Wales, highlighting the differences between Wales’ cities - in particular Cardiff - and other areas. Outside of London, legal services across the UK also tends to be clustered in certain cities and regional hubs. This report therefore analyses how legal services in Wales’ cities compare with cities elsewhere in the UK. This report has been produced to support the work of the Commission on Justice in Wales. Our other work in this strand has analysed trends in public spending on justice functions in Wales. Some of the analysed trends in public spending will have heavily impacted the legal services sector - for example, the large cuts to civil and criminal legal aid spending in Wales. This report is structured as follows. Section 2 analyses available data on the size of the legal sector in Wales, exploring in turn the legal activities firms located in Wales, the number of employees and their earnings in the legal sector, legal education, and finally the gross value added (GVA) from legal services in Wales. Section 3 compares the legal sector in Wales with other countries and regions, while section 4 focuses on city-level comparisons of the legal sector of Wales’ cities and other cities across the UK. Section 5 concludes. 5 2 The size of the legal economy in Wales This section outlines available data on the legal economy in Wales. In turn, it analyses the composition and trends in the number of legal services firms located in Wales, employment and earnings in the legal sector, the nature of legal education in Wales, and the revenue and Gross Value Added (GVA) derived from legal activities in Wales. As well as assessing the overall size and strength of the legal economy in Wales, this section analyses available data at a local authority level to highlight the differences in the sector between the cities – and in particular Cardiff - and the rest of Wales. 2.1 Legal services firms in Wales In relation to data on legal services firms in Wales, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) provides data on the activity, size and location of UK businesses that have registered for VAT and/or PAYE, based on an extract of the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). There were around 890 enterprises in legal activities in Wales in 2018. An enterprise is defined as the smallest combination of legal units which has a certain degree of autonomy within an enterprise group (defined as a group of legal units under common ownership). This figure has fallen from a peak of 955 in 2015. Wales’ share of legal activities enterprises across the UK has also been falling, from 3.1% in 2010 to 2.7% in 2018. Meanwhile, there were 1,080 local units in the legal activities industry in 2018. Local units are defined as individual sites that belong to an enterprise. Wales’ share of UK local units in legal activities is slightly higher than its share of enterprises, but has also been falling since 2010. Firms registered as part of the legal activities industry can also be broken down by industry subclasses, namely Barristers at law, Solicitors, and Other legal activities (shown in figure 2.2). There were 205 enterprises recorded as barristers at law in Wales in 2018, only 1.8% of the UK total. This figure has increased quite substantially since 2010 from an estimated 135. The number of solicitors businesses in Wales however has fallen from 540 in 2010 to 470 in 2018 (3.4% of the UK total). 6 Figure 2.1: Number of legal activities enterprises and local units in Wales, 2014 to 2018 1,200 3.5% 1,000 3.0% 2.5% 800 2.0% 600 1.5% 400 1.0% 200 0.5% 0 0.0% 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Enterprises Local Units Share of UK enterprises (right axis) Share of UK Local Units (right axis) Source: ONS (2018) Inter Departmental Business Register Figure 2.2: Legal activities enterprises in Wales, by industry 2018 2010 Barristers at law Solicitors Other legal activities Source: ONS (2018) Inter Departmental Business Register Data supplied by the Solicitors Regulator Authority (SRA) to the Welsh Government (2018) cited a lower number of head offices of law firms based in Wales, of 438 in 2017, a figure which has fallen slightly since 2015. The SRA’s 2017 Annual Review estimates that around 4% of England and Wales’ law firm head offices are based in Wales. Figures 2.3 and 2.4 provide a breakdown of legal activities enterprises in Wales and the UK as a whole by turnover size band and employment size band respectively. This data should be interpreted with 7 caution since many enterprises will belong to a wider enterprise group, with higher turnover and employee numbers. The median turnover for Welsh legal activities firms is between £100,000 and £200,000 per year. Compared with the UK as a whole, a slightly larger share of Welsh firms have turnover above £200,000 a year (38% compared with 34%). In terms of employment, most legal activities enterprises in Wales (as across the UK) are classed as micro-enterprises, employing fewer 10 employees. A larger share of Welsh enterprises employ more than 10 employees (23%) compared with the UK as a whole (14%). Only around 30 legal activities enterprises employed 50 or more employees in 2018.1 Figure 2.3: Legal activities enterprises by turnover size, 2018 % of all legal activities enterprises 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Wales UK £0 - £49,000 £50,000 - £99,000 £100,000 - £199,000 £200,000 - £499,000 £500,000 - £999,000 £1,000,000 - £1,999,000 Above £2,000,000 Source: ONS (2018) Inter Departmental Business Register Figure 2.4: Legal activities enterprises by employment size band, 2018 % of all legal activities enterprises 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Wales UK Micro (0 to 9) Small (10 to 49) Medium-sized (50 to 249) Large (250+) Source: ONS (2018) Inter Departmental Business Register 1 Figures rounded to nearest 5. 8 The UK Legal 500 (2019), an organisation which researches the legal market, notes that many of the large commercial law firms in Wales are located along the M4 corridor. Poor transport links mean clients in other parts of the country, unable to source help from local firms, often instruct firms in England. The geographic distribution of legal activity firms across Wales has been a long-standing concern, with implications for economic development and access to justice for those in more rural areas (Davies and Mainwaring 2006; Franklin and Lee 2007).