A shortfall in non-Western language skills among UK lawyers is failing to meet the needs of business and leading to an over-reliance on external support, with just 24% of FTSE 250 lawyers speaking a foreign language.

The three foreign languages most commonly spoken by top in-house teams in the UK are French, German and Spanish, while just a handful of lawyers speak Mandarin or Cantonese, according to research by legal outsourcing group Obelisk.

Just 691 of the 2,930 registered in-house lawyers at the UK operations of FTSE 250 companies speak another language.

Obelisk's research also found Turkish is not spoken by any lawyers employed at FTSE 250 companies, despite Turkey accounting for €13.4bn (£11.3bn) in M&A activity last year.

"There are really two uses of languages in law: drafting, and then culture and interaction," said Obelisk CEO Dana Denis-Smith. "It is true to say that more and more drafting is done in English, but the business development is increasingly important."

Denis-Smith contends that lawyers' abilities to master the languages spoken in emerging markets represent "the difference between getting by and getting ahead".

The report suggests that the language gap is "likely to exacerbate the need for additional language support from external providers", passing on extra cost to businesses and firms.

"Once companies try to establish foreign presences, they do require linguistic resources to conduct business locally," adds Obelisk linguistic manager Nadya Kirichenko. "It means they will not only need people having sufficient command of a given language working on site, but also among those dealing with such matters from head offices."

Banks and petroleum companies have the most diverse mix of languages, with Barclays, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) having the most languages represented.

The survey did unearth one standout polyglot in RBS lawyer Rajesh Gohil, who speaks eight languages, including Russian, French and Mandarin.