Industry revenue of »legal activities« in Ireland 2011-2023

Over the last few years Ireland’s legal industry has received much attention from international law firms due to its strong economic growth and its pivotal role in Brexit. Many of them such as Pinsent Masons and Simmons & Simmons from the UK and Covington & Burling and Dechert, from the U.S., have now opened several new offices in the country. Dentons, the largest law firm globally in terms of lawyer headcount, is also expected to do so in 2020. The fear of Brexit is also pushing lawyers from England and Wales to join the Irish roll with as many as 1,893 doing so in 2019 alone. Interestingly, some of them were from magic circle companies such as Linklaters, Allen & Overy and Freshfields, despite none of them having offices in Ireland. Such robust activity is driving industry revenues which are expected to increase from 4.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2017 to over 5.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. As of 2016, Arthur Cox, A&L Goodbody and McCann Fitzgerald were the country’s top three firms in terms of turnover.