Bristol-born law firm Osborne Clarke achieves 19 per cent international revenue increase

International legal practice Osborne Clarke, first established in Bristol back in 1748, but has since expanded globally, has announced revenues of €525 million for the year 23/24. This is a 19 per cent increase on the previous year, which was €442 million.

Omar Al-Nuaimi, Osborne Clarke's International CEO, said: "This is an excellent set of results and I'm particularly proud we've over-delivered on our €500m target a year early. It's a tribute to all the work of our international teams, who I'd like to thank for their efforts. 

"A big highlight this year was opening our third US office in Miami. The US remains a very exciting market and important for our international clients, and our team has had a successful start in strengthening our relationships across the US, Latin America and Spain.  

"We're also building on our international ESG offering and have invested in growing our energy and utilities sector client teams across the UK, Germany, Italy and Poland. Holding ourselves accountable as well, we expect approval on our international near- and long-term commitments to the Science Based Targets very soon as we continue to reduce the carbon emissions across our business."  

Osborne Clarke's UK income increased by 11 per cent to £240.5 million. The firm had a net profit of £84.8 million, an increase of 14 per cent o last year.

Osborne Clarke increased revenue across all of its UK service lines, with double digit growth in Advisory; Disputes and Risk; and Projects, Real Estate and Finance.

Four of the firm's seven key UK sectors – life sciences and healthcare; retail and consumer; mobility and infrastructure; and energy and utilities – achieved double digit growth too. With strong results also across the built environment; and technology, media and comms sectors.

Conrad Davies, Osborne Clarke's UK Managing Partner, added: "This time last year we committed the business to a number of key change and investment programmes aimed at growing our income and improving profitability. I'm delighted that these have really paid off. 

"We're proud of what we've achieved and it's all down to the dedication and commitment of our teams. We set ourselves some challenging goals around productivity and efficiency – driving more focus into what we do and how we do it. It's all about asking our people to work smarter not harder. Ensuring more of our income falls to the bottom line gives us the ability to continue to invest heavily in our people and business, which is essential to keep pushing forward with our strategy and to deliver on our client promises. 

Lara Burch, Head of Osborne Clarke's Bristol office, said: "It's fantastic to have secured these strong financial results. This year we saw our biggest partner promotion round in the last 10 years, with 11 partners being made up in May – seven of whom were in our Bristol office. We are very pleased to have awarded all our UK colleagues a five per cent profit share in June, and August will see the first year of our long-term incentive plan, rewarding high performers with bonuses up to 40 per cent paid over three years.

"Other highlights of the year come from our progress against our 'Osborne Clarke for Good' framework, like our ongoing collaboration with the University of West England and other leading Bristol law firms, UWE Futures. Launched in January 2024, this is an important initiative offering work experience and a mentoring programme for final year undergraduate students from ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds. It's a great example of how we're working to deliver on commitments set out in our Race Action Plan earlier this year by creating opportunities in our local community."