Available to all 430 staff
The Manchester-based firm Express Solicitors has announced that its staff will receive a bonus payment equivalent to one week’s worth of their base salary this November in order to help reduce the effects of the cost of living crisis.
The new policy will be applied to staff members at every grade in the organisation, including trainees. This means, the firm confirmed, that staff earning £20,000 would receive a post-tax bonus payment of £337, while those earning £50,000 would bag £772.
According to the Legal Cheek Firms Most Lists, trainees at Express Solicitor’s take home £23,000 in their first and £24,000 in their second year with NQ base pay rising to £31,000.
Express Solicitor’s Managing Partner, James Maxey told Legal Cheek: “We recognise we can’t solve the cost of living crisis but in conjunction with our pay scales for Trainees being recently reviewed upwards and our appraisal process for other staff leading to pay rises across the board, this will be an extra welcome help to our staff when cost of living is impacting employees at every level.”
“In the run up to Christmas we will also have our winter incentive scheme that awards bonuses for target related achievements and prizes for those nominated by other members of staff. Additionally there will be our regular Christmas bonus for support staff of £100 for all staff earning £35,000 or lower,” he adds.
This is a novel approach with the personal-injury specialist firm being the only firm thus far to explicitly correlate the size of the cost-of-living bonus to its employees’ base salaries.
In July, Bird & Bird gave trainees and staff earning £50,000 or less a £1000 cost-of-living bonus, whilst Irwin Mitchell said it had dished out an extra £900 to the majority of employees to everyone up to and including senior associates to help soften the effects of escalating prices in April. Clifford Chance is also offering a one-off payment of £1,500 this month to its trainee lawyers and business service staff.
