The UK has a two-tier hierarchy of ‘legal cities’ outside London, with Edinburgh and Glasgow both in the second tier, according to property consultancy CBRE.

Its report is based on a sector benchmarking exercise covering law firm locations, number of fee earners, and average area and rent per fee earner.

Edinburgh and Glasgow “appear to use space more efficiently than the other cities with both providing the smallest average space per fee earner compared with their UK counterparts”, it says. Edinburgh meanwhile has the second highest number of offices for legal firms anywhere in the ‘big six’ regional cities and commands the third highest rental per square foot, behind Manchester and Birmingham.

But when measured by the total office floorspace occupied by law firms in each city, the top tier of Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester each have well over 750,000 sq ft of space, well ahead of Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow which have volumes in the 300,000 to 500,000 range.

The report says only six independent firms are headquartered in Edinburgh and four in Glasgow. Aberdeen also has four, and ranks tenth in its number of law firm offices but eighteenth overall for total office space.

Stewart Taylor, senior director at CBRE in Edinburgh, said: “Law firms are undergoing a period of rapid evolution and transformation, fuelled by rising demand for legal services, increased pressure on fees and intensifying competition from more savvy, innovative competitors as well as freshly merged larger firms.”