Business confidence among leading law firms has dipped over the summer – despite the vast bulk of partners still forecasting robust growth over the next 12 months.

The Legal Week/ EJ Legal quarterly business confidence survey found 90% of senior lawyers expect their firms' fee income to rise – an 8% drop since the last survey in July this year.

Just 10% believe that turnover will remain the same and nobody is expecting a fall.

Fifty-three percent of partners predict double-digit growth over the next 12 months, a slight fall on the last survey in July when 56% of respondents were counting on growth of at least 10%. The latest poll also found nearly one in five respondents expects turnover to grow by more than 15%.

The findings suggest that confidence has been affected by the traditional corporate lull over the summer despite the continued string of private equity-backed deals and recent figures from Mergermarket that show deal activity is up this year by more than 30% on 2003.

However, many corporate lawyers are also reporting a notable upturn in activity in September.

Linklaters corporate partner Charlie Jacobs told Legal Week: "The markets are coming back strongly. There has been quite a flow of deals coming in over the last couple of weeks. Things are better than a year ago."

One senior banking partner with a top five City firm added: "We are seeing a material increase in confidence. We have not had a summer lull this year as opposed to the last three or four years.

"We were being less aggressive in pricing [over the summer] because we could not cope with the volume of work."

The survey also confirms that firms are primarily targeting corporate finance and banking for increased investment, with 42% of senior lawyers saying that corporate will be the main priority and 30% aiming to invest more in banking.

David Dalgarno, UK managing partner of McDermott Will & Emery, said: "Most firms would want to have clients who are the biggest and banks and corporates are that. But banking is a very difficult market to get into. Banks have very tight panel systems."

Latham & Watkins corporate partner Charles Fuller said: "We are not where we were in 2000/01 but, [compared] to where business was 12 to 18 months ago, there is a lot more going on.

"It is steady as she goes. We do not want to return to a big boom followed by a big crash."