Slaughter and May has raised pay for newly-qualified (NQ) lawyers to £150,000, bringing the firm to parity with its Magic Circle peers.
The firm was slated to review its pay rates in November, but has brought the review forward, with the new rate effective from 1 September.
The increase means that Slaughters no longer trails Herbert Smith Freehills and Hogan Lovells, which both announced raises to £135,000 for their NQs in June.
The latest salary arms race kicked off at the beginning of May, when Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer announced that it had hiked NQ salaries by 20% from £125,000 to £150,000. The other Magic Circle firms soon responded, with Clifford Chance, Linklaters and A&O announcing that they would matching £150,000 by the end of that month, leaving Slaughters as the only holdout.
Freshfields was also the first mover in April 2022, when the firm raised salaries from £100,000 to £125,000, setting a new Magic Circle benchmark.
The £150,000 salary still leaves the Magic Circle behind their free-spending US counterparts. Gibson Dunn and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan currently offer starting salaries of £180,000, and Paul Weiss announced last month that new trainees would earn £180,000 upon qualification.
The hikes have raised eyebrows in some quarters, with market-watchers describing the trend as ‘slightly alarming’, noting that clients ‘must question getting advice from junior lawyers who are paid so highly.’
For more, see The new £150k benchmark for Magic Circle associates – ‘rewarding the best’, or ‘slightly alarming’?
