Magic Circle law firm Clifford Chance ups pay for junior lawyers to £125,000 a year
Magic Circle law firm Clifford Chance has upped pay for its newly qualified (NQ) lawyers to £125,000 a year, in a sign the UK’s most prestigious law firms are facing continued pressure to offer huge salaries to their most junior solicitors in order to recruit and retain top talent.
The firm told City PM its most junior qualified solicitors will now earn £125,000 plus bonuses, after it gave them a £17,500 pay rise, in hiking their salaries from £107,500 a year.
The pay rise puts Clifford Chance’s NQ salaries on par with those paid out by London’s oldest law firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, which hiked pay for its freshly qualified lawyers to £125,000 in April this year.
The hike however puts Clifford Chance, the UK’s biggest law firm by revenues, ahead of its other Magic Circle rivals, including Slaughter and May, which pays £115,000, and Linklaters and Allen & Overy which both pay £107,500 a year.
The Magic Circle pay war, which initially started in the United States, comes as the combination of a dearth of legal talent and bumper demand for legal services has driven up law firm salaries in both the UK and the US.
The increased presence of high-paying US firms in London’s legal market has also driven up legal sector salaries to eye-watering heights, with American firms increasingly paying their London lawyers similar sums to those paid out to US lawyers – with some US firms paying salaries of up to £160,000 a year.
Law firms have however faced criticism over the eye-watering sums being paid out to new lawyers, amid concerns junior lawyers are not worth their salaries, and fears they will be overloaded with work in a bid to justify the sums being paid out.
The pay rise comes after Clifford Chance partner Jonathan Kewley launched a manifesto to transform the firm into the most “uplifting” workplace in the world, as he called for staff to be given micro-retreats every six weeks in a bid to make it a “joyful” place to work.