Top firms operating in major regional markets are to come under renewed pressure to raise pay for junior lawyers amid evidence that the gap between the City and the rest of the
UK is widening.
Newly-qualified lawyers in the UK’s five biggest cities outside London now take home an average salary of £35,200, compared with the benchmark £56,000 figure for top London lawyers.
The figures make grim reading for junior lawyers in regional markets where the newly-qualified pay band at many top firms has risen by just £2,000 since 2003.
Legal Week research shows that even salaries at leading firms in each of the UK’s secondary legal markets significantly trail those offered at City firms.
The gap has led to claims that regional rates will be raised substantially for the first time in six years as the draw of surging London salaries puts pressure on the regional labour market. Pressure will be further increased if, as expected, top London firms go ahead with another series of pay rises this spring.
Leeds leader Walker Morris currently offers £34,000 to its new lawyers, although the top 50 firm is expected to increase that figure by around 10% later this year.
In Manchester, a newly-qualified solicitor can expect to pocket £35,000 while in Newcastle, Dickinson Dees offers its new lawyers the same amount.
Junior lawyers at Birmingham giant Wragge & Co and Bristol’s Osborne Clarke both take home £36,000 a year, which is comfortably ahead of the local rates paid by other firms in the two cities.
Wragges senior partner Quentin Poole commented: “Market salaries in London are really hot right now, much more than in Birmingham. But are we finding that is stopping us from recruiting good quality people? Absolutely not.”
Newly-qualified solicitors at the regional offices of both Pinsent Masons and DLA Piper earn £35,000, with DLA Piper’s Scottish lawyers taking home just £32,000.
In stark comparison, newly-qualified lawyers in the London offices of the top national firms, including both DLA Piper and Pinsents, are earning £53,000, more than 50% higher than colleagues working in the regional offices.
DLA Piper Manchester chief Roy Beckett commented: “Just like everyone else, junior lawyers choose a certain place for a reason. While money does come into it, if quality of life is as important to you as quality of work, then you are likely to choose to work outside London.”
One regional Eversheds partner said: “It is a fundamental problem for national firms with credible London offices because they are not comparing like with like.”
Talkback: Will City wages trigger a regional brain drain? Click here to have your say.
Can regional assistants not use the internet? If this was about City assistants, you'd have half a dozen moaning posts. No wonder they don't get paid as much in the sticks.
They're probably busy working.
Maybe regional associates haven't replied to this post because instead of spending all day on the web, they get on with their work during the day then go home to their life outside work?
Perhaps if City associates were a bit more efficient, they may be able to enjoy a more balanced life and would feel less of a need to moan?
My point exactly. If you don't speak up, do you think partners will just hand over pay-rises out of the goodness of their heart? And regarding
the previous two posts: what is your point? Are you both saying that you guys should be getting paid far less than assistants in the City and that the gap should keep getting wider, even though firms keep shipping out more work to the regions? Well, you'll certainly make a lot of partners very happy.
Its all about priorities and having a real and full life outside work. Reading all the various comments over the past few months by 'City' solicitors who have to work nights and weekends, cancel holidays, not have babies or go part-time, you would have to pay me literally millions to even contemplate working in the City. I'm still going to be better off than the majority of people out there and no amount of money is worth sacrificing sanity and happiness for.
You'd have to pay me millions to live in Leeds.
As profits increase it is becoming much harder to justify the size of the difference - especially for firms like mine doing the same work as the city for much the same clients, hours similar to those in London in many departments, and with profits per partner of £400K + equal to those at many London firms.
£400k is nowhere near what London partners are making these days. That might cut the mustard in the West Country but here in London the magic circle firms will probably each average more than £1m or thereabouts this year.
Also, the article above omits to mention that a growing number of NQs in London are getting NY rates i.e. £90k plus £17.5k bonuses. That's three times regional salaries!
From what you say of salaries for NQs at firms in other regional cities, I am guessing there won't be a queue of other 5-year PQE corporate lawyers coming to work here in Stoke-on-Trent. Such is life.
That's incorrect (not to mention patronising). Only Slaughters and Linklaters partners are on £1m-plus. Many City firms' partners are on around £400k-500kish PEP (or less) - Norton Rose, DWS, Nabarros, Lawrence Graham, Pinsents, Bird & Bird, WFW..I could go on.
They call it the 'magic circle' because the employees are all strung out on coke in the bathrooms after lunch just to keep up with the frenetic pace they set themselves immediately after completing the training contract. It's about working smarter not harder, the City is a revolving door of burnouts, junkies and mysogenists.
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