The law firm salary war continues, according to reports from London law firms about law salary increases.
Paul Hastings is leading the pack with a 5 percent raise for their newbies, bumping their pay from £164,000 to £173,000. They tweaked their pay scale a bit, changing the exchange rate from £1 to $1.31, to £1 to $1.30.
Meanwhile, Sidley Austin isn’t far behind. They’ve upped their salaries to £166,500, which is a 4.4 percent increase from the previous £159,500.
And then there’s Ropes & Gray – they’ve really gone for it with a whopping 12 percent raise, taking their newly qualified lawyers’ salaries from £147,000 to £165,000.
The interesting thing about Ropes is that this increase started from January 1st and it doesn’t include bonuses. They’re also increasing the pay for their trainees in London. First-year trainees are now getting £60,000 (up from £57,500), and second years will get £65,000, up from £62,500.
This is all part of a bigger trend where US law firms in London are hiking up salaries. Just this month, Davis Polk and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton raised their newly qualified pay by 3 percent to £170,000 and £164,500 respectively.
And back in December, Weil Gotshal & Manges raised their pay from £165,000 to £170,000.
But it’s not just the US firms. UK firms are stepping up too as they compete with the US big law firms in the salary stakes, although they remain somewhat behind in terms of numbers.
Slaughter and May, for example, bumped their pay by nearly 9 percent to £125,000 last November. This put them on par with other big UK firms like Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, and Linklaters. They even overtook others like Baker McKenzie and Hogan Lovells, which raised their pay earlier in 2023 to £118,000 and £120,000.
Allen & Overy and Linklaters had already raised their pay to £125,000 earlier last year, but they didn’t match Clifford Chance and Freshfields’ rates in 2022 due to tough market conditions.
US Law Firm Salary Raises
And it’s not just in the UK. In the US, Milbank started a new round of raises last November by increasing pay for all its associates by $10,000, setting a new scale starting at $225,000 and going up to $425,000 for more senior associates.
Then, three weeks later, Cravath Swaine & Moore – often a trendsetter in the US with their famed and emulated ‘Cravath Scale’ – matched Milbank’s salaries for junior associates but offered a bit more to their mid-level and senior associates.
Firms like McDermott Will & Emery, Kirkland & Ellis, and others are all matching these new salary standards. The US law firm salary raises, often based around the ‘Cravath scale’, continue to see increases as firms seek to retain legal talent and to attract talented associates.
If you have news about law firm salary changes and any related information feel free to contact us at Lawfuel@gmail.com.
