With financial results continuing to trickle in from the last few UK law firm stragglers, the temptation right now is to focus on the past. On what impacted firms' performance last year, rather than what is likely to drive them forward over the months and years to come.

But as our lead feature explains, firms need to get to grips with what is likely to be a key challenge both now and in the future….keeping a generation of lawyers stereotyped as being flighty content enough to stay.

Legal Week will be taking its own steps towards satisfying this next generation with our move to an entirely digital delivery platform, with this week's print issue being the last one we produce.

Not that we can entirely forget about the past of course and this week we carried out the first analysis of the results of the UK's 50 largest law firms by revenue over the last year. Despite a resurgent deals market, average growth across the group has been stunted by a fall in the euro against sterling.

Allen & Overy finance director Jason Haines takes a closer look at the impact of currency fluctuations and the problems with creating 'theoretical revenue' by reporting on a constant currency basis.

In speaking with managing partners over the course of results season, it is fairly clear that greater efficiency has been a driver for many law firms over the last 12 months. Pressure from clients wanting to keep a lid on excessive fee hikes and the 'new normal' has caused many to look at how they can take costs out of the day-to-day running of deals. As our feature discusses, a large part of this has been deploying existing resources more effectively and efficiently. Little wonder then that many of the larger law firms have woken up to the benefits of professional project managers to smooth out the process of large and unwieldy transactions.

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