Last week, Barlow Lyde & Gilbert earned the unfortunate accolade of being the firm with the most disappointing results in the Legal Week Top 50 – all the more galling given the fact that it has been behind some of the most high-profile litigation victories of the last year.

While the average top 50 firm was recording a 13% increase in turnover against a 19% hike in profits, Barlows saw fee income dip by 0.7% against static average partner profits.

This compares unfavourably with its litigation-focused rivals. At Ince & Co, turnover and profits rose by 6.4% and 7.5% respectively. And while profits remained static at Clyde & Co, it could at least point to a 20.2% increase in turnover following its well-received merger with aviation boutique Beaumont and Son.

Barlows' disappointing showing comes after a year in which it secured a number of notable court victories, including Equitable Life and, more recently, Hammonds' successful defence of the £142m negligence claim against it by the Football League.

The firm has blamed its disappointing results on a lull in litigation activity following a glut of big-ticket cases.

But the results also illustrate quite how reliant Barlows has come to be on its litigation department, which accounts for three quarters of the firm's fee earners.

A few years back the firm was lauded in some quarters for the prowess of its transactional practice, which was spearheaded by head of corporate John Longdon and finance head Graham Wed-lake, who both joined from Travers Smith in 1996.

Then, in November 2004, Longdon quit. His resignation was followed by the departures of Wedlake and fellow finance partner Neil James. All three ended up at Winston & Strawn's London office. The losses were compounded in July last year by the departure of outsourcing specialist Kit Burden, who was head of commercial and technology, for DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary.

The combination of these departures and the firm's unsurprising desire to shout about its court victories from the rooftops would suggest that the firm has quietly turned its back on any ambitions to build a substantial transactional practice.

This is strenuously denied by the firm, although it concedes that its transactional ambitions have been scaled back.

The departures of Wedlake and James led to a strategy review that signalled the abandonment of any attempt to build a stan-dalone finance practice.

Instead, the firm is focusing its non-litigation energies on corporate and commercial. Following the review, the corporate finance department was split into three standalone practice areas: commercial and technology, corporate and employment.

The firm says the result is a leaner transactional practice, with a clear ambition to build in all three areas. But is this strategy working? At a time when the M&A market is in overdrive, Barlows' pickings look distinctly slim. Its biggest deal in recent months was an instruction from Hawkpoint Partners to advise it on the £100m placing and open offer by Homestyle Group.

The firm insists it is in the market for senior corporate lawyers, but concedes that its litigation focus makes recruitment difficult, if not impossible in the current climate. Sources concede that the firm will be in a stronger position to recruit in a slow M&A market when its litigation department is firing on all cylinders.

However, it is notable that the last spate of departures came in a rising market out of hires made in a downturn. It is too early to assess whether Barlows can ultimately fulfil its revised transactional ambitions. It is far safer to assume that for the foreseeable future it will be litigation rather than corporate powering the firm.