A rise of 16%
US law firm Dechert has upped the salaries of its London-based newly qualified (NQ) lawyers.
Dechert NQs will see their salaries swell to a staggering £110,000, up £15,000 from the previous salary of £95,000 or 16%. London trainee pay, however, remains unchanged: first years earning a still very impressive £45,000, rising to £50,000 in year two. Dishing out around ten training contracts annually, Dechert provides a £10,000 grant for both the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC), too.
The salary increase sees Dechert rise up our Firms Most List NQ pay league table and leapfrog fellow US players Shearman & Sterling (£105,000), White & Case (£105,000), Sullivan & Cromwell (£101,500) and Jones Day (£100,000). The rise stops short of the rates currently paid by Gibson Dunn (£112,500), Weil Gotshal (£115,000), Ropes & Gray (£115,000) and Skadden (£118,000).
The 28-office outfit covers a broad range of practice areas, including finance, IP and litigation, and our Firms Most List shows rookies have the opportunity to spend time abroad on secondment — 48% have done so.
Meanwhile in other Dechert news, the firm announced a 60% autumn retention score. The outfit declined to provide further details on this. Last autumn, Dechert chalked up a score of 50%, and in 2016, the Philadelphia-founded law firm posted a rate of 73%, hanging on to eight of its 11 NQs.
This news comes just days after fellow US firms Ropes & Gray and Kirkland & Ellis posted perfect autumn scores of 100% (10 out of 10) each, while White & Case reported a rate of 84% (21 out of 25).