London Law NQ Pay Rates
The news about Quinn Emanuel’s major pay rise for junior lawyers in London has reignited a salary war – if the ignition was ever required with the rapidly rising London law pay rates in The City.
Freshfields has already raised its rates for junior, newly qualified (NQ) salaries to £150,000 in the same week that Allen & Overy (A&O) and Shearman & Sterling formally merged to become A&O Shearman.
And then ‘most feared’ litigation firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan revealed it had hiked its annual NQ salary in London to £180,000, one of the highest starting salaries in the City.
Quinn Emanuel joins U.S. firm Gibson Dunn, which also pays £180,000 to its London NQ lawyers annually. Other American firms quote salaries in U.S. dollars, like Akin which reportedly paid around $215,000 (£179,000) in 2022, and Milbank which increased NQ pay to $225,000 last year (approximately £183,000 then).
U.S. law firms have steadily expanded their presence in the City over the years and now outpace their English counterparts in compensation. And more firms are looking to join the fray in London with Perkins Coie announcing that they will be opening a London office.
Not only are they paying young lawyers lucrative sums, but partners at the top 15 U.S. firms in London earned 25% more than partners at the UK’s top 15 firms in 2022.
While Freshfields’ new £150,000 NQ salary trails the highest American firms, it exceeds the rest of the magic circle firms which were all paying £125,000 as recently as November 2022. A&O Shearman has not budged from that £125,000 figure yet.
The rising pay rates for London lawyers and the Freshfield NQ salary increase has reduced the gap between the major UK biglaw firms and the US firms to around 30 percent – still a significant pay gap – but the rises are likely to continue
And the pay increases ahead for junior lawyers are likely to be lead by the US law firms which, according to legal recruiters will probably be in the £190k/£195k range.
