BS landing 8th spot does further point to an artificial result...

What price would you put on having a life between 6pm and midnight every day of the week?

If it is low then you’ll love these white shoe law firms - lap up their marketing about what it means for you.  If your price is a bit higher then you’ll prioritise other elements of the survey over pay.

Not necessarily 9:32 - it's about pay satisfaction, not amount.

RPC is still working off a £70k NQ rate. Without a significant increase very soon, I'm off. Even Clydes has lifted salaries for goodness sake.

To the Dentons Senior Associate. Pay is squeezed down here in the junior ranks also. Getting 3 - 5 Linkedin DMs a day about better paid roles.

@09.43 

I see your point, but 8th for an average paying regional firm does seem somewhat inflated - especially when you look at the rest of the top 10... 

Will Sir Nigel Knowles get the boot from DWF? 
 

The firm is not a happy place. Pay is poor. Promotion prospects woeful (it’s now nearly 400 days since DWF promoted a member of its own staff to partner). The firm is haemorrhaging staff. Yet nothing meaningful happens until investors point out the effect this has on the share price.
 

I find myself reminiscing about the days of Andrew Leaitherland. If we ask him nicely, maybe he’ll come back? 

Won't anyone think of the well-being of these junior lawyers being paid huge salaries? Being paid too much money is bad for you! WAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

 "remark that everyone had a 'personal income' (i.e. a trust fund) anyway, so it was unnecessary"

Really?

I'm at Clydes. It's actually a lovely place to work. The pay isn't great and the hours are longer than they make out. But I used to work at similar silver circle firms which paid less and had more tossers. Not great to see a low percentage of satisfaction. 

To the Shoosmiths business services minion moaning about pay : that is the difference between fee earning and fee burning

Didn’t answer the survey but can confirm Weightmans’ position on the list is fair. 

@Wokey

"Won't anyone think of the well-being of these junior lawyers being paid huge salaries?"

Well that depends, doesn't it?

If they're white men then of course not - they're only there because of their innate privilege and their exorbitant salaries are proof of the structurally corrupt nature of the UK. Empire empire, colonialism, empire.

But if they're black* and/or women and/or trans** then of course we will, and it's urgent that we celebrate them and set up an internal networking group and mentoring scheme to ensure that their promotions are fast tracked and that they don't keep being held back so unfairly. I do hope they aren't being asked to work too hard, that would be disastrous for their mental health.

*Sorry, "BIPOCs"... that's what we're saying this week.

**Think this one is still ok.

And we still are sitting at £70k at NQ level with no sign of an increase in sight...

"Will take home £200k in total this year as a 4PQE including special bonuses," said a Macs lawyer (although one solicitor heard a colleague "remark that everyone had a 'personal income' (i.e. a trust fund) anyway, so it was unnecessary"). 

Wow. Looks like Macs diversity scores in social mobility are still lagging if thats the type they are employing. 

Another reason to go US- its not solely full of posh kids. Only worked at two US firms but feel the oxbridge, toff type just dont seem to end up here. 

Wombles 1% below AG on salaries? AG pay is far superior in my local market. Something smells very fishy. 

My guess is the 4PQE at Macs (given the reference to special bonuses), is in corporate and probably billing well over 2000 hours a year and just hasn't worked out that for that level of slog there's another 30-50k pre-bonus if they jump ship to the US (like most of the rest of their corporate colleagues have!)

Hilarious that the DWF lawyer thinks they’re anywhere near silver circle

S&G management don’t need to worry about pay rise tbf. More people leave than stay. The CFO has just left too… another woman…But it’s ok we don’t no need experience - just keen beans with Pom Poms ….

‘we are not a law firm’

“I'm at Clydes. It's actually a lovely place to work. The pay isn't great and the hours are longer than they make out. But I used to work at similar silver circle firms which paid less and had more tossers. Not great to see a low percentage of satisfaction. “

Clydes isn’t, and never has been, and never will be, silver circle. 

To the guy who is ostensibly “embarrassed” that others know he earns 200k and that his medic friends earn less but do more, there is the option of leaving if it makes you that uncomfortable.  

Nice to see SPB bobbing comfy at the 51st place. The firm did better than I expected, given what an utterly miserable, bland bucket shop it is.

Numbers starting to look really poor compared with competitors. PEP rose by 49.5% last year. Still no sign of meaningful rises - fair bit of catching up to do now and people will soon be voting with their feet. 

"Clydes isn’t, and never has been, and never will be, silver circle."

So? Who gives a f*** about any of that stuff? A job is a way to pay your mortgage (or to get a mortgage if you're not there yet). Fretting about the "status" of your employer seems like a massive waste of time to me. It says a lot that this is someone's headline response to a comment that's essentially about somewhere being a pleasant way to pay the aforesaid mortgage.

To the DLA associate / PR person who said: “the disparity between regional and London pay is slightly galling in the era of ‘flexible working’ and ‘work from anywhere’". 

This is now the understatement of the century at City headquartered firms with regional outposts. The salary should not be considered “good” for the regions, because you are working just as hard as your London colleagues, and held to the same standards at annual review time. The old argument about being top of the market in Birmingham etc no longer applies because anyone can live anywhere and pop into London for a bit of face time when needed. 

What’s the NQ salary for DWF?

The firm is so secretive and the actual salary is never disclosed. Do they make staff sign NDAs?!

Clearly from this article it is not on par with similar international firms (80k approx) but does anyone have an actual figure? 

The Slaughters score is simply the culmination of symptoms which have been lurking under the surface since at least 2018-2019. 

Back then, there were already grumbles about pay and benefits packages, so Slaughters partners did what they do best - they dithered, and put out a firmwide PR campaign to say that they were listening to what people wanted and they had hired external consultants (Bowland Solutions) to advise them and run workshops with all segments of the firm to truly listen to what people wanted.

Bowland came in, and sent out a survey, in which 95% of the questions were variations on the theme of "Do you agree it is really great that the firm has no billable targets?"; and the last question was "Do you value your non-financial benefits?".

The workshops (which I attended back then in my capacity as an associate) were equally focused on "culture" and "non-billables" and "non-financial benefits" like the concierge service which no one I know has ever used, EVER.

Unsurprisingly then, what came out of the survey was a below market pay raise (at all levels apart from NQ - more on that below), and a meaningless gesture "confirming" that Slaughters would not move to a billable target approach, and giving us an extra 5 days of leave.

Now talking about the leave for a second - if you do not use your 30 days, you lose them and do not get compensated (fairly normal in this industry). But it's virtually impossible (at least past a certain PQE stage) actually to take even close to 30 days of holidays each year. You can certainly put 30 days down, but you will be working at least some of the time on some of those days, as the partners know full well. So they knew that this new benefit was in fact water off a duck's back as far as they were concerned, hence why they went with it.

Then comes the pay raises. What Slaughters has been extremely good at doing is discouraging discussion of paybands - they trumpet far and loud about the NQ rate, but the truth is that, once you discount the usual payband raise which happens each May, associates have been receiving below-inflation pay bumps over at least the past four cycles. The wide concertina that was the paybands, reflected in the wide concertina that we charge our clients for different levels of seniority, has shrunk significantly - the bottom tier goes up and catches up progressively to the other tiers, who go up much more slowly and below inflation. We are now at a stage where 4-5 PQEs here are probably paid more or less the same as 1PQEs at Freshfields (good on FBD), meaning that our 1-2-3-4 PQEs all squeeze into that one FBD payband. 

The reason this is grating on many is because - although a surprisingly large number of people here are innumerates who can't add two and two together and recoil at the sight of a calculator because they haven't seen one since primary school, having sought refuge in Classics and History, even they can see that the margins don't add up.

- At NQ level, they're paid 100k gross and charged out at say £300ph

-At say 4PQE they're paid 140k gross (I'm guessing, not sure exactly) and charged out at a blended £650-700ph

So the partners' margins improve substantially from the seniors.

What Slaughters also doesn't say is that they are ruthless at 6PQE onwards and moving off band is not good, but I will let my youngers find that out for themselves once they get there.

Anyways that all brings us to these scores - unsurprisingly there has been a massive exodus following Covid (and boy did the financial shenanigans intensify during that period - they froze paybands, then essentially skipped a payband and moved everyone down a peg when they unfroze the whole scheme, which was genius financially for the partners), people are busier than ever, the group partners are busy circulating their utilisation spreadsheets and swimming in their pools of money, gloating at the numbers they are producing and all fighting for the top spot (albeit DI has had a strong hold on it for a decent while now), and morale is at an all time low.

And so they decide to bring Bowlands Solutions back in - now one thing which IS objectively exciting is the new Counsel role and new pay models proposed for that, I'm quite interested to see what they do there. But otherwise my prediction is that it is likely to be more of the same - put some loud thing out there which they can put out to potential recruits, whilst continuing to use every trick to squeeze the middle bands which are the engine of the firm.

Oh and they hired the worst COO in the universe  - FBD ought to thank us for their scores, we took her away from them.

Inevitably people will say that we are well paid and some tiny violin is playing somewhere. That is objectively true (although at times in my career my pay per hour charged was lower than that of a burger flipper at McDonalds), and that is also why I am still here - content with the quality of work (which I can get elsewhere too, I'm not deluded about SM) and overall not in it just for the pay. 

But it does not detract from the fact that the profit-building model of the firm is only generating exceptionally high profits for the partners not because the firm is exceptional, but because the partners are exceptionally successful in limiting the revenue share which they have to fork out to their associates. What I find sad is that they saw the pandemic as an opportunity to turn the screw and fill their pockets. I have lost many colleagues over the past 12 months and that is bound to continue if the current trend is not reversed. 

“because you are working just as hard as your London colleagues, and held to the same standards at annual review time”

Nope. 

I'll also join the exodus if salaries are not significantly increased.  I barely get paid more than an NQ at Clydes.  It is a complete joke given the PEP increase.  The mood is very, very sour within the firm.

@ View from Slaughters - tl;dr but probably time to leave if you’re bothering to write all that out

I can only assume BS coming in 8th for pay satisfaction is due to the trainees and NQs who are very well paid considering the cost of living and target hours. I'd be pretty certain that the score given by seniors was very much lower!

Bemused by the argument that the advent of remote working for City firms -> some levelling between City and regional pay. 
 

Regional firms don’t pay less simply because they’re in the regions. It comes down to the clients they have, the work they do, and what they can bill those clients for that work. 

I'm ex-Clydes.  At my current firm, the hours are similar, the people are as nice, the work is much better, and my pay is significantly more.  Clydes' recent change to salaries basically covers inflation for the past 4 years even though they had been telling people there would be a 'substantial' increase as they understood they were losing people to pay.  Multiple partners told me when I left that they would leave Clydes if they could, didn't understand why I hadn't left sooner, and predicted the firm was going to the dogs with the rate of associate attrition and general morale.  I've even heard some clients have stopped giving work because they are fed up of the associate turnover on their cases.  Drastic changes are needed but, given the firm's recent Senior Partners have barely lasted a year, I doubt it'll come.  It's sad but they seem to be in a terminal decline.

@ View from Slaughters - sadly, 4 PQE nowhere near 140k... 3 PQE is 123k (keep in mind 1 PQE is 110k), so 4 PQE will be lucky to be pushing 130, i.e. the same as a 1 PQE at FBD. Absolutely ridiculous how Slaughters get away with this level of bunching and probably makes our mid-level and senior associates by far the worst paid in the MC. 

But all isn't lost! If you're a true glutton for punishment, you can make it through 2600+ hours for 2 years of show-round to possibly be one of four other psychopaths made up to partner (in the last 4 years I can think of two newly-minted partners who are actually nice people... unsurprisingly, none of them are in one of the corporate teams). 

Dwf nq salary in the regions is £46k 

Brabners is £37k 

Stephenson Harwood pay is still awful. 90k for NQs in this market is now behind the curve. 

DWF also make you feel like you should be grateful for them giving you a pay rise that leaves you woefully behind the market rate. Such a shame that good people leave because managers just aren’t allowed/authorised to offer competitive salaries 

15:36 - who are brabners?

CC 4.5 PQE 148k + 34k bonus

If people want a data point 

DWF is an “International law firm with silver service clients, silver circle hours and silver circle work”.  Is this right!? I might need to recalibrate how I view this firm…

Knights - the pay is great for the laterals but sh!t for some of the acquisitions. Two tier firm 

Clydes announced an emergency pay review this week because so many associates have quit over the last 12 months due to the firm falling massively behind the market. As a result we got pay rises ranging from 0%-15%. The general view is that the pay increase is not good enough - it puts the firm back within a market rate band for City law firms, albeit right at the bottom. Benefits such as maternity and paternity could also be a lot better so that doesn’t help matters. Because so many people have left, some associates are really overworked and departments are under resourced. The annual pay review is July, so we’ll see what happens then. 

@anonymoose 21:13- p.s you're earning less than you would at Macs. Is this seriously the bands CC lawyers have been boasting about? Poor, no wonder I always see juniors leaving that place.

The point everyone seems to miss about DWF, and the reason they can’t compete on salary, is that they have to pay all the partners and their investors and invest in the business. Other firms have to pay the partners and invest in the business. 
 

I know DWF says that the partners are paid through the dividend, but that’s shrinking as they sell out. 
 

There is no way the firm can compete on salary with this reality. 

Isn’t the reality even worse?

If your firm lists, the partner group at that time banks all of the toil and value created by successive generations.  
If you are not part of that partner group, you have missed the boat. 

It would be far better to pursue your career at a non-listed firm because the opportunities and pay will be better.

I wonder what Langleys folk are feeling about being subsumed by the prestigious and well-regarded stable of Knights?

Actually we were sold to Kennedys and it’s sh!t 

If I worked at Langleys only to discover The Golden Turd of Knights was about to gobble us all up I would be updating my CV ASAP! 

What's a senior at Addleshaws likely to be on? They're surprisingly high on that table 

So bad how DAC Beachcroft have chose not to increase salaries of staff with the knowledge of how hard they will be hit with price hike and living costs shocking!

Dac beachcroft terrible salary review given to me as in no increase in salary at all not suprised by the results lets wait for the loyal staff to run and a serious exodus

DACB are an insurance outfit. Good quality of life and regular work but pay that is way below the Corporate market rate. Don’t expect the Corporate market rate if you aren’t doing Corporate work, folks. DACB will pay the rate for insurance work which is typically 50% less in the long run (unless an owner who can make millions when selling to investors). 
 

ps - Partners are usually NOT the owners in insurance firms. A few may be, but most are not. 
 

pps - if you doubt my ps comment, ask Keoghs Partners, ask Crawford Legal Services Partners, ask the average DWF partner, ask the …..

Sorry to hear this, i have heard exactly the same. Unfortunately there are lots of people very unhappy with the salary reviews and are taken aback by the cavalier attitude of DAC Beachcroft. They already have huge issues with staff retention. Something needs changing not sure who is making these silly decisions!

Problem is that if you’re doing def insurance work at places like RPC, Kennedys, DACB, WBD, etc, and aren’t happy about your pay, where can you go?  Clydes pay a bit more but that team isn’t growing so there aren’t roles (and their own associates can’t go anywhere).  So these firms know they don’t need to pay more.  Hence they don’t. 

@Danube

MA regions is 70k, London about 120k I believe.

Major unrest here as DLA have just announced 25% raises in the regions... NQ pay going up to 65k in Manchester...

Re DWF: I was surprised at how generous the salary was at the junior end a few years ago. From memory this was circa £92k at 2PQE level back in 2019/2020 (plus share options)...

Some here are seemingly disappointed at £70k NQ salaries. I'm on £55k as an NQ in London and here I thought I was doing very well for myself... 

@AG unamused - 11:27 

DLA NQ in Manchester increasing to £65k? 
 

That’s a significant increase in the market. Will be interesting to see how other firms in the city respond as currently they’re all sitting on 50-52k

DWF sinks further. A mere 16 souls plucked from 3,800 fee earners to be new partners. Why bother? 

@rachel

I hear DAC is offering higher salaries and joining bonuses to new staff and telling current staff no pay rises.

I know of 1 or 2 salaried partners at BLM in the NW get 65K or thereabouts - senior associates [10-15PQE] even less - pay stalls at these firms once you hit 7/10+ PQE and are still only earning 55k.  You may accept this if the work life balance mantra was true - it was true like 10 yrs ago when you did finish at 5pm.but not these days - BUT where do you go - its not much better anywhere else and going in relatively senior at one of the other insurance firms never really ends well - the incumbents view you with suspicion and feel threatened whereas the collegiate promise on offer at these firms never exists. 

65k for a junior partner in an insurance firm is about right up north after a year or 2 since being made up. Steady rises thereafter up to 85k/100k or so, but beyond that you’ve got to be different / special or put your money in and start taking risks.

Only stars get over 200k at the proper insurance firms in the north or south, frankly (by proper I mean insurance focused, not these firms that have a bolt on to their corporate dept)

To 3rd Feb anon at 09.18 : if you are working way beyond 5pm at an insurance firm that’s on you. There is no way your firm expects or demands that. It’s circa 1500 hours across the board at all firms and if you crack on that’s 9-5 and no more. If your quality of life is suffering at an insurance firm you simply are not efficient.

Interviewed last year at dwf for a 2PE role - reading these comments i'm glad I rejected a second interview and joined somewhere I genuinely enjoy.

quick marker: £180k for 3PQE, hit 2200 and got c. £40k bonus (excluding the 4 covid bonuses paid out last year). the hours are not as horrible as people paint it out to be here. 

DAC BEACHCROFT are paying circa£44k for NQ in the regional office which isn't huge in comparison so i get if they are paying new staff more than they are likely to lose a lot of their loyal staff who can't afford to live with all the rises in living costs.

London and the south is so much more expensive to live in and buy property in that I don’t know why insurance firms bother having offices here.  In the north £70k goes a long way. 

Dacb are reviewing salary now - backdated to jan and again in august. Lots of nonsense here. I’ve just had a 15% rise. Salary rises are based on market and role. 
 

Nq rate in the region is between £44-48k depends upon the sector.