City law firm boss questions sustainability of huge lawyer salaries

Will Jeremy be voluntarily be taking a pay cut in that case then? Thought not

As we know, the US firms are driving the competitive City law salaries. If you look at the history of the Cravath scale, adjusted for inflation (there’s a handy website that will show you the scale for each PQE back to the 1980s, both in real terms and adjusted for inflation) then you’ll see that the Cravath scale is largely unchanged in decades (e.g., a 4th year in 2025 is getting USD 385k incl. of bonus. A 4th year in 2008 was getting USD 375k incl. of bonus and adjusted for inflation).

This suggests that these salaries are perfectly sustainable for the US firms. Maybe S&S need to question why it is not sustainable for them

Are S&S partner drawings unsustainable? – “At the top end, profit per equity partner (PEP) has also risen by more than 50% in the last five years, and now sits at around £1.1 million.”

It’s interesting – I feel like the new battle ground on signaling prestige has moved from PEP to NQ pay (given how readily PEP can be manipulated).

I hear a lot of resentment in the “squeezed middle”, even up to some salaried partners, who also end up having to manage that resentment in their own functions.

My partner recently moved from a firm, where the NQ pay for those she was taking on responsibility for supervising and developing had caught up with hers (at 8yrs PQE). Only when her notice went in did they finally acknowledge this as problematic and make last ditch attempts to rectify this.

I qualified in 2014, at the firm I qualified in at that time, NQ salaries were actually lower than they had been in 2007 (prior to the financial crisis), so I agree with some of the comments above and the article about fluctuations. However, the current situation does seem particularly crazy.

I think ultimately firms would be better served by putting in fairer bonus and reward structures. Starting all NQs on the same salary in my view makes absolutely no sense at all. A solicitor that works 8-6 in a commercial property team and has anticipated billings of £250k is not the same as someone in a busy corporate, banking or litigation team who might work 8-10 + weekends and be on track for billing double that of their colleague… yet at the moment in many firms their base value is the same and the different contributions (and sacrifices) they make are not adequately recognised.

Senior partners forget the massive (lifetime) sacrifices junior lawyers have had to make to get jobs that attract these salaries. Pre-NQ pay boom, lawyers were getting less than Assistant Managers in Aldi. I’m so sick off all this unsustainably guff. This is a top, highly demanding job and deserves a top pay.