Gateley bigshots see personal wealth soar on flotation, but face penalties for early exit. On 8 June Gateley launched the UK legal industry’s first initial public offering (IPO) and raised £30m in capital on its first day of trading on AIM. The £30m was raised through the placing of 31,589,937 shares at an offer price […]
Former legacy Herbert Smith finance chief Jason Fox was profiled in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 in 2007 after beating the firm’s revenue target for the group by a wide margin in the second year of his tenure. “What we set out to do was to have a world-class banking practice, and we spent a decade […]
The Lawyer’s first Salary Survey covers lawyers’ pay, base salaries, bonuses, benefits and pay satisfaction, as well as their wider career satisfaction and aspirations. We have unearthed eye-opening information about the effects on earnings of location, sector, experience and, of course, gender. How much are you paid? Are you happy with your salary? Are your […]
Move of the week Former Olswang CEO David Stewart has joined Turks and Caicos firm Griffiths & Partners as a partner. The move sees Stewart return to the islands where he started his career in 1990 with Miller Simons O’Sullivan. Since then he has worked for legacy SJ Berwin before departing for Olswang in 1997. […]
While the domestic economy is in steady recovery, dynamism is coming from foreign investors and Ireland-headquartered internationals. Looking back at the pre-crash period what would you say characterised Irish M&A activity? Brian O’Gorman, managing partner, Arthur Cox: Between 2005 and 2007, Irish M&A activity was characterised by the speed at which transactions were done and […]
SSE GC Liz Tanner is on a mission to commercialise her department while awaiting the results of an inquiry that could reshape the whole energy market. Liz Tanner has done much to shape SSE’s 80-strong legal team in the short time she has spent in the general counsel job. In less than two years she […]
The magic circle’s salaries at the junior end of the spectrum are well publicised. In the last month, news has been gradually coming out about the latest round of increases. Newly qualifieds (NQ) pay now stands at £70,000 at both Clifford Chance and Slaughter and May while Linklaters ’ newly-qualifieds will be paid £68,500. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer runs a salary band system […]
London’s mid-market is diverse, with a wide range of firms specialising in different areas and succeeding or struggling depending on their strategy. The range of salaries potentially available reflects this, with firms such as Farrer & Co paying their NQs close to £60,000 and others, like Winckworth Sherwood , paying nearer to £47,000. At the time the salary survey […]
Many of the larger London firms match – or get close to – the magic circle when it comes to salaries for newly-qualified solicitors. At 1-3PQE level, the gap is still narrow. For example, Ashurst , one of the few large non-magic circle firms to release its 2015/16 pay increases so far, will give 1PQE associates in […]
Outside London, pay is lower but goes further. There is naturally a wide level of variation, however, depending on region and size of firm. The Bristol-based independent Burges Salmon , for example, paid NQs £42,500, but in many other regions, the average starting salary is considerably lower. North East and Midlands-based NQs, for example, can expect a […]
By their very nature, boutique firms tend to specialise in few areas of law, so comparing one to another is of limited use. But a trend can be seen when such firms are taken as a whole and compared with the rest of the market. Reflecting their smaller size, boutique firms typically pay lower salaries […]
Associates at US firms in London are notoriously the best-paid in the UK market, with salaries in many cases far outstripping the magic circle. At the very top of the pay scale for newly-qualified solicitors, the likes of Davis Polk and Latham & Watkins match the $160,000 rate for New York first-year associates – between £96,000 and £100,000, depending […]