The offshore magic circle refers to a number of law firm

Law firm

A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise clients about their legal rights and responsibilities, and to represent clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other...

s practicing in offshore jurisdiction

Offshore financial centre

An offshore financial centre , though not precisely defined, is usually a small, low-tax jurisdiction specializing in providing corporate and commercial services to non-resident offshore companies, and for the investment of offshore funds....

s which are considered to be amongst the leaders in the field. The term was adopted as an imitation of the more well-recognised London Magic Circle

Magic Circle (law)

The "Magic Circle" is an informal term used to collectively describe what are generally regarded to be the five leading UK-headquartered law firms and the four or five leading London-based commercial barristers' chambers.-Law firms:...

 law firms. The concept of an offshore magic circle was first suggested in the wake of a series of cross-jurisdictional mergers and expansions by various firms.

Although there is some disagreement over exactly who should constitute the offshore magic circle, a recent article in Legal Business suggested that an offshore magic circle might constitute the following firms:

• Appleby
  Appleby Spurling Hunter
  Appleby is an offshore legal, fiduciary and administration service provider. It has offices in the key offshore locations of Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Jersey, Mauritius and Seychelles as well as the financial centres of London, Hong Kong and...
  
  
• Bedell Cristin
• Carey Olsen
  Carey Olsen
  Carey Olsen is a law firm in the Channel Islands with offices in Jersey and Guernsey with approximately 125 lawyers. It was created in 2003 by the merger of Jersey firm Olsens and Guernsey firm Carey Langlois....
  
  
• Conyers Dill & Pearman
  Conyers Dill & Pearman
  Conyers Dill & Pearman is an offshore law firm. Founded in Bermuda in 1928 , the firm has subsequently opened legal practices in a number of other offshore financial centres, including the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Mauritius...
  
  
• Harneys
• Maples and Calder
  Maples and Calder
  Maples and Calder is the largest law firm in the Cayman Islands. As at January 2008, it is also the largest offshore law firm in the world....
  
  
• Mourant Ozannes
  Mourant Ozannes
  Offshore law firms Mourant du Feu & Jeune and Ozannes merged on 1 June 2010 to create Mourant Ozannes. The combined firm has approximately 200 fee-earners and 50 partners, making it the world's third largest offshore law firm and the largest in the Channel Islands...
  
  
• Ogier
  Ogier (law firm)
  Ogier is an offshore law firm which provides legal and fiduciary services. It advises on BVI, Cayman, Guernsey, and Jersey law as well as providing complementary administration services. It has 52 partners, 135 associates, 315 administrators and over 300 support staff...
  
  
• Walkers
  Walkers (law firm)
  Walkers is a Cayman Islands based offshore law firm. Although the firm now has offices in a number of jurisdictions, over half its staff remain based in the Cayman Islands.- History :The firm was originally founded by Bill Walker Walkers is a Cayman Islands based offshore law firm. Although the...
  
  

Criticism

The concept of an offshore magic circle has been criticised by the wider legal community and within the offshore legal sphere itself.

• In the wider legal community, it has been suggested that label is a little self-aggrandising. Not only does the proposed offshore magic circle seem fairly big (with ten firms, as opposed to the five firms in the original magic circle), but it also appears to contain a fairly high percentage of the total number of offshore firms, including almost all the significant Channel Islands
  Channel Islands
  The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...
  
   firms. But the combined population and economies of all the principal offshore financial centres combined still only amount to a tiny fraction of the United Kingdom
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
  
  , and the magic circle contains an infinitely smaller percentage of the law firms in the United Kingdom.

• Within the offshore legal community, critics have also suggested that the principal criteria for inclusion appears to be for a firm to operate in more than one offshore jurisdiction (thereby excluding a number of single jurisdiction firms, such as Cains
  Cains (law firm)
  Cains is one of the largest and oldest law firms in the Isle of Man. Its precise date of founding is not certain, but the firm claims to be over 100 years old...
  
   (the winner of the Legal Week Offshore law firm of the year 2007) and Hassans
  Hassans
  Hassans International Law Firm is the largest law firm in Gibraltar. It has approximately 74 lawyers and was established in 1939 by Joshua Hassan, just returned to Gibraltar, and later the first Chief Minister of Gibraltar.-Practice:...
  
  ), rather than the quality of the practice. In some cases, low quality practices are acquired in a target jurisdiction, and then rebranded as a top flight firm without any change of personnel. The approach is slightly ironic as a member of the real magic circle, Slaughter and May
  Slaughter and May
  Slaughter and May is an international law firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom and a member of the 'Magic Circle' of leading UK law firms. It also has offices in Beijing, Brussels and Hong Kong....
  
  , has eschewed the multi-jurisdictional approach and focuses purely on excellence within a single jurisdiction.

• It is also highly Anglo-Saxon centric, ignoring all of the major firms in Luxembourg
  Luxembourg
  Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
  
   and Liechtenstein
  Liechtenstein
  The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
  
  .

Edward Fennell, a legal columnist for The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, has expressed slightly irreverent views of law firms designating themselves as part of an offshore magic circle. However, the concept of an offshore magic circle has gone down very well with some of the firms involved, and the concept is actively promoted by legal recruitment consultants who earn substantial fees by persuading city lawyers to spend a few years working in an offshore jurisdiction.

Endorsement

Although not expressly endorsing the term, the Chambers legal directory in its 2008 edition recognised the move towards multi-jurisdictional offshore firms, and including a new ranking for offshore firms globally rather than by jurisdiction. Arguably this was the first formal attempt to frame a defined offshore magic circle, although the directory pointedly did not use the term.

That list included all the same names as the list produced by Legal Business for the putative offshore magic circle. The directory expressly stated that single-jurisdiction firms, no matter how good, would not be considered.

The Lawyer

The Lawyer

The Lawyer is a weekly British magazine for commercial lawyers and corporate directors, first published in 1981. It is owned by Centaur Media plc....

 magazine produces a comprehensive list of the top twenty offshore law firms, published each February.

Multi-jurisdiction firms

The following table sets out the offshore jurisdictions in which the principal multi-jurisdictional offshore firms have offices (correct as at October 2008). The table does not list "onshore" offices, such London, Zurich or Hong Kong. Dubai and Dublin are treated as "offshore" in this table.

Multi-jurisdiction offshore law firms

Firm	Bermuda Bermuda Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...	BVI British Virgin Islands The Virgin Islands, often called the British Virgin Islands , is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union, located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico. The islands make up part of the Virgin Islands archipelago, the remaining islands constituting the U.S...	Cayman Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...	Dubai Dubai Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...	Dublin	Guernsey Guernsey Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...	Jersey Jersey Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...	Other	"Home" jurisdiction
Appleby	Yes	Yes	Yes			Yes	Yes	Isle of Man Isle of Man The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is... , Mauritius Mauritius Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar... , Seychelles Seychelles Seychelles , officially the Republic of Seychelles , is an island country spanning an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, some east of mainland Africa, northeast of the island of Madagascar....	Bermuda
Bedell Cristin					Yes	Yes	Yes		Jersey
Carey Olsen						Yes	Yes		Channel Islands*
Conyers	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes				Anguilla Anguilla Anguilla is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin... , Mauritius Mauritius Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...	Bermuda
Harneys		Yes	Yes					Anguilla Anguilla Anguilla is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin... , Cyprus Cyprus Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...	British Virgin Islands
Maples		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes				Cayman Islands
Mourant Ozannes			Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes		Channel Islands*
Ogier		Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes		Jersey
Walkers		Yes	Yes	Yes			Yes		Cayman Islands

* Carey Olsen was formed by the merger of two roughly equivalent sized firms from Jersey and Guernsey. Mourant Ozannes was also formed by a merger of firms from Jersey and Guernsey respectively.