Research shows consultant-led firms increasingly attracting senior lawyers away from traditional practice models
Four of the UK’s ten busiest recruiters in 2024 were consultant-led platform firms, new Codex Edge data shows but researchers warn the sector’s record growth is steering it toward its own fight for senior talent.
Platform (fee-share) firms now operate at meaningful scale, with the four largest each above 400 lawyers and three above 500. Setfords, Taylor Rose, Keystone Law and gunnercooke ranked among the entire profession’s top 10 hirers in 2024 Setfords first overall with 189 hires. Researchers caution that continued expansion could trigger a “war for talent,” squeeze the senior-lawyer pipeline, and accelerate private-equity-led consolidation.
Consultant-led “platform” law firms have moved decisively from the margins of the legal market to its mainstream, with new sector data showing that four of the ten busiest recruiters in the UK last year operated a fee-share model rather than the traditional partnership.
The findings come from the third annual Platform Firms Report published by legal-data company Codex Edge, which tracks the market through its ATLAS platform. The report covers the 2024 calendar year and confirms that the sector built on lawyers retaining a majority share of the fees they generate, typically between 50% and 80% is now a structural feature of the profession rather than an experiment at its edges.
Setfords is the largest platform by headcount, with 587 lawyers operating within the firm. It also recorded 189 lawyer hires in 2024, making it the most active recruiter of any UK firm during the year. Overall, four of the ten busiest recruiters in the profession in 2024 were platform firms.
According to the report, Setfords was the single most active recruiter of qualified lawyers across the entire UK legal market in 2024, taking on 189 lawyers up from 150 the previous year. The fee-share arm of hybrid firm Taylor Rose placed second with 108, while Keystone Law (83) and gunnercooke (74) appeared seventh and eighth respectively. The figures count direct hires of qualified lawyers only and exclude growth through acquisition.
Their presence alongside established names such as Knights, Addleshaw Goddard, Paul Weiss and DWF signals how far the model has matured. At the close of 2024, the four largest platforms by headcount were Setfords (587), Taylor Rose (522), Keystone Law (519) and gunnercooke (418), with Spencer West, Excello Law, Lawhive and Nexa Law each comfortably above 100 fee-share lawyers.
“Platform firms are no longer seen as the place to go when you have limited or no other options. It is now an active career choice.”
That assessment, from Matthew Dashper-Hughes, Global Talent Director at gunnercooke, captures a shift the report traces through its movement data. More than twice as many lawyers left traditional firms for platforms in 2024 as moved the other way a pattern repeated across every major firm tier. For the first time, more lawyers also joined platforms from in-house legal roles than departed for them.
The model’s traditional strongholds remain residential and commercial property, which together account for the largest concentrations of consultants. But the report records meaningful depth across commercial litigation, corporate and M&A, employment, family and private client work evidence, Codex Edge says, that the structure has evolved into a broad-based alternative spanning virtually every discipline.
Retention is also holding firm. Among larger platforms, rates ranged from roughly 88% to 97%, while three smaller firms reported 100% retention across the year striking figures given the higher average age and retirement profile of fee-share lawyers.
For all the momentum, the report’s authors strike a cautionary note. Codex Edge chairman Roger Wagland writes that sustained, sector-wide growth “will begin to bring a new set of questions and challenges,” chief among them competition for a finite pool of senior, client-following lawyers.
The report identifies a clear post-qualification-experience “sweet spot” of roughly 9 to 18 years, with the average platform recruit moving at around 16 years PQE against a market average of 12. Should the consulting model keep drawing experienced practitioners away from traditional firms, the report warns, the wider profession could face a shortage of senior lawyers available to train and develop the next generation ultimately shrinking the very talent pool platforms rely on.
The report points to private-equity appetite as a likely accelerant. Setfords, the largest platform by headcount, already carries significant PE backing, and Codex Edge cites broker analysis suggesting investors are increasingly pursuing a “buy-to-build” strategy acquiring a platform and bolting on complementary practice areas. Free from the consensus-driven constraints of a partnership, platform firms may prove unusually well suited to the external investment that has historically made the legal sector wary.
Whether that tips the long-predicted wave of legal-sector consolidation into reality remains, as the report acknowledges, “anyone’s guess.” What the data establishes with more certainty is that the fee-share model is now, in Codex Edge’s words, a fundamental part of the UK legal fabric.