Squire Patton Boggs raises London NQ pay to £73,000

Rises in the regions too

International player Squire Patton Boggs has upped its London and regional newly qualified (NQ) solicitor salaries by 7% and 5% respectively.

Until recently, those qualifying into the firm’s London office, which teeters between the City and Shoreditch in upmarket Devonshire Square, started on a not too shabby salary of £68,000.

Now, the firm has boosted this figure by 7% to reach a cool £73,000. Legal Cheek’s Firms Most List shows Squire’s lot have leapfrogged the likes of CMS (£70,000), K&L Gates (£71,000) and Eversheds Sutherland (£72,000), and earn the same levels of cash as their peers over at Stephenson Harwood (£73,000).

The 47-office-outfit hasn’t neglected its regional NQs either. Those qualifying in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester will earn £44,000, a 5% rise on the global firm’s previous offering of £42,000.

Squire Patton Boggs confirmed trainee pay remains unchanged. The firm’s London trainees earn £37,000 in year one, rising to £42,000 in year two, while rookies in the regions receive £26,000 in their first year and £28,000 in their second year. The firm offers 25 training contracts annually.

The US-headquartered firm was a strong performer in this year’s Legal Cheek Trainee and Junior Lawyer Survey. Scoring an A* for its partner approachability and rated highly for its client secondments, the latter of which it won the award for at our glitzy Awards ceremony last month, it notched up A’s in no less than seven categories: training, quality of work, peer support, tech, office, canteen and social life.