Private equity invested an estimated £250m in UK law firms in 2025, against a record £534m in 2024, according to research by Acquira Professional Services reported by Legal Futures on 3 June 2026. The same report put 2026 investment "so far" at around £80m, without naming a cut-off date. Law360 reported the same 2025 estimate on 2 June 2026, the day the research was published.
The money fell; the number of deals did not. Acquira’s market intelligence platform, Momentum, counted 15 PE-backed legal transactions completed in 2026 by early May, compared with 12 in both 2024 and 2025.
The figures by year
| Period | Estimated PE investment in UK law firms | PE-backed legal transactions | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | £377m | Not given | Legal Futures, 27 February 2025 |
| 2024 | £534m (a record) | 12 | Legal Futures, 27 February 2025; 3 June 2026 |
| 2025 | about £250m | 12 | Legal Futures, 3 June 2026; Law360, 2 June 2026 (value only) |
| 2026 “so far” (as reported on 3 June 2026) | around £80m | Not given | Legal Futures, 3 June 2026 |
| 2026, to early May | Not given | 15 | Legal Futures, 3 June 2026 |
| 2019 to 2024 | nearly £1.2bn | Not given | Legal Futures, 27 February 2025 |
| Since 2019 | more than £1.5bn | Not given | Legal Futures, 3 June 2026 |
The two totals agree with each other. Nearly £1.2bn to 2024, plus about £250m in 2025 and around £80m in 2026, comes to a little over £1.5bn, which matches the later figure for the period since 2019. The sum is our arithmetic.
Method and limits
The series has one author. Every figure in the table comes from Acquira Professional Services, which describes itself as offering advisory, intelligence and transaction support to the legal sector, and which sells access to Momentum. No second, independent series on private equity investment in UK law is cited to set against it.
What the coverage says about the method:
- the values are estimates; neither report explains how undisclosed deal values were estimated;
- the transaction counts for 2024, 2025 and 2026 include "bolt-on acquisitions completed by firms already operating PE-backed platforms", so a single platform buying several firms adds several deals;
- "12 in both 2024 and 2025" is put as a full-year comparison, while the 15 for 2026 covers roughly four months.
Acquira’s quarterly reports page describes a review published in February 2026 that covers "over 160 transactions" in UK legal M&A in 2025; that wider figure includes deals with no private equity involvement.
What the numbers show
More deals, less money, at least in Acquira’s count. With 15 transactions by early May against 12 for the whole of 2025, 2026 had already passed the previous full-year count. The value for 2026 so far, around £80m as reported on 3 June, was about a third of 2025’s. Smaller deals are one explanation. It cannot be tested: the reports do not say whether the value and count series cover the same transactions, and the two 2026 figures have different cut-offs.
The largest firms have not taken outside equity. According to the June 2026 report, no top 100 UK law firm has taken private equity since DWF became the first, in 2023. Acquira estimated the largest deal of 2025 to be Ufenau Capital Partners’ acquisition of Express Solicitors, which had revenue of £89m.
One investor dominates the record. In the February 2025 report, Inflexion was the biggest single investor over five years, at nearly £450m, with DWF, Movera, WorkNest and aosphere in its portfolio. That concentration matters for the 2024 record: a few large deals can move a yearly total by hundreds of millions.
Acquira draws its own conclusion from the series, in words Legal Futures quotes: "the consolidation clock is ticking" for mid-market firms. It also says: "By May 2026, 8+ active PE platforms are competing for quality targets across all regions." Those are the adviser’s readings, not findings that can be checked against the published figures.
Legal Futures also listed five deals it had reported after Acquira’s early-May cut-off: Fletchers taking on clinical negligence and Court of Protection teams from Freeths, Express Solicitors taking the Sorrymate brand from Smooth Law, Orwins buying Clarkslegal, HF buying Rosling King out of administration and Higgs acquiring McKenzie Law. We will cover the deals that have a public statement from a party one by one in Heads of Terms.
Sources
- Legal Futures, "“The clock is ticking”: PE investment in law down but deal volume up", 3 June 2026: legalfutures.co.uk
- Law360, "PE Spending On UK Law Plummets As Deals Rise", 2 June 2026 (summary paragraph only; the full article is behind a subscription): law360.co.uk
- Legal Futures, "Private equity invests £1.2bn in the law in just five years", 27 February 2025: legalfutures.co.uk
- Acquira Professional Services, quarterly reports page: acquiraps.co.uk
Related reading: Brady Solicitors: LDC takes an undisclosed stake; Hempsons: HF completes purchase, CBPE’s role undisclosed.
