Legal services in the United Kingdom
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The legal services sector of the United Kingdom is a significant part of the national economy; it had a total output of £22.6 billion in 2013, up from 10.6 billion in 2001, and is equivalent to 1.6% of the country's gross domestic product for that year. The sector has a trade surplus is £3.1 billion in 2013 and directly employees 316,000 people, two-thirds of whom are located outside London. The UK is the world's most international market for legal services. It allows virtually unrestricted access for foreign firms, resulting in over 200 foreign law firms with offices in London and other cities in the UK. Around half of these are US firms, with the remainder mainly from Europe, Australia and Canada. The UK legal market has a strong global position due to the popularity of English law. Some 27% of the world's 320 legal jurisdictions use English Common law.
London is a major international legal centre and more international and commercial arbitrations take place there than in any other city in the world, with 1,198 claims being issued in the Commercial Court in 2013, of which 80% involved at least one party whose address was outside England and Wales. Five of the world's ten largest law firms by revenues are headquartered in the UK, and three of the largest five Global 100 law firms, based on headcount in 2013 have their main base of operations in the UK. As of 2013 the legal services market in the United Kingdom is experiencing rapid change as a result of forces including market consolidation, globalisation, regulatory change leading to greater corporatisation and the use of new legal structures, and an increasing role of technology. In 2013, gross fees generated by law firms in the UK increased by 8.4% to a record £30.6 billion. This was the strongest growth rate in six years and was supported by the recovery of the UK's financial and business sector, the increase in housing market activity and the strong exports in legal services.
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This entry incorporates text from “Legal services in the United Kingdom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.