UK Legal Services: The Growing £50bn Market
19 Nov, 2025
19 Nov, 2025
The report highlights strong similarities between the legal and accountancy markets in terms of ownership dynamics, a high number of independent ‘local leaders’ and fragmentation presenting an abundance of bolt-on opportunities, enabling significant potential for private equity and strategic buyers to grow local and regional practices into nationwide players. It also presents great timing for legal firm owners to exit in what is becoming a very liquid market, or raise investment to fund their own growth journey.
Interestingly, AI has a considerable role to play and will enable firms to ‘do more with less’, however, only a quarter of SME law firms are using generative AI.
Included in the full report is a deeper dive in on the areas mentioned above and also lists out the key acquisition criteria of what strategic buyers and investors are looking for in the current market including strong interest from beyond the UK borders!
Click this link to access the full UK Legal Services Market and M&A report.
17 Apr, 2026
Ascent Target has recently analysed the Testing, Inspection and Certification market in the UK and identified that it is a compelling environment for private equity and strategic buyers to execute buy-and-build strategies.
