Law firm offers £125k starter salary in hiring war
‘Many junior lawyers making the move to US firms could see their gross annual earnings increase by £50,000 to £60,000’
ONE of the City’s elite “magic circle” law firms has boosted the starting salary for its most junior solicitors to £125,000, escalating a war for talent with aggressive American rivals.
Clifford Chance updated its graduate recruitment website yesterday to reflect a 16pc salary bump to £125,000 from £107,500 – the second pay raise in just over six months.
The remuneration package will take effect immediately and will be available to the incoming cohort of summer 2022 and spring 2023 lawyers, according to a person familiar with the matter.
On top of a base salary of £125,000, most young solicitors will also be entitled to bonuses. “This is part of an overall associate salary review. It is fair to say that associates at the firm are being remunerated differently this year,” the source said.
The pay increase comes at a time when top City firms are being pressured to raise salaries by American entrants to the British legal market. US firms typically demand longer hours but remunerate employees more handsomely.
Many London branches of US firms peg their pay to the dollar and, given the relative strength of greenbacks to the pound, British firms have found themselves chasing a moving target.
“In the post-pandemic era, the demand for legal talent from law firms is unprecedented. Across the spectrum of the legal market there are more vacancies than there are candidates,” said Matthew Porter, a director at the recruitment firm BCL Legal.
He added: “We have seen many UK law firms increase pay for their associates several times during a 12-month period and generous bonuses have been paid out in order to try to keep up with the ever increasing salaries being offered by US law firms.
“Many junior lawyers making the move to US firms could see their gross annual earnings increase by £50,000 to £60,000.”
A person familiar with the matter said that Clifford Chance was not seeking to match the salaries offered by American firms but had worked towards “narrowing the gap”. The Canary Wharf-based firm has achieved this in areas such as private equity, where associates are remunerated at a rate closer to the top of the market.
Clifford Chance offers around 95 training contracts per year, making it one of the largest firms for new recruits.
In the autumn 2021 retention round, it retained 70pc of its trainees, keeping 37 of 53 newly qualified lawyers, compared with rates of between 85pc to 94pc for the other magic circle firms, according to analysis by Legal Cheek.
These peer firms included Linklaters, Slaughter and May, Freshfields, and Allen & Overy.
Under the new compensation scheme, Clifford Chance has matched Freshfields’ newly qualified starting salary and beaten Allen & Overy and Linklaters at £107,500 and Slaughter and May at £115,000.