Solent: CBRE study highlights Southampton as premier league destination for law firms

CBRE’s new, market-defining report, Law in the Regions, cites Southampton as a top city by number of legal offices. It stands out as the largest destination for legal services anywhere in the south of England (excluding London) with a total 174,560 sq ft of office space occupied by law firms in the UK Top 100. It is also the highest city in the south for the total number of fee earners.  

Though Southampton is not in one of the top two tiers, it is the eighth-largest city nationally in terms of its number of legal offices, on a par with Newcastle and Cardiff.  

The CBRE report provides a comprehensive overview of the legal sector in the UK regions. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with some of the country’s top law firms, it also provides a basis for real-estate strategy. Its results, which will prove a benchmark in the sector, reveal key indicators such as the top 30 law-firm locations, the top cities by number of fee earners, and  the average area and rent per fee earner.

It ranks UK regional legal cities, measured by the total office floor-space in each city occupied by law firms in the UK Top 100 (as identified by trade magazine Legal Business). Its analysis shows a two-tiered hierarchy of leading regional cities for law firm occupation.

In the top tier, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester each has well over 750,000 sq ft of office space occupied by law firms. This is well ahead of the second tier, made up of Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow, with volumes in the 300-500,000 sq ft range.