Two big City law firms have announced their retention rates today — and there are contrasting fortunes.
Clifford Chance will keep 45 out of a cohort of 47 newly qualified (NQ) trainees, equating to an autumn retention figure of 96%.
Meanwhile, mid-tier giant Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) is hanging onto 71% — 17 out of 24 — of its autumn qualifiers.
The magic circle firm — which has one of the highest trainee intakes in the City, taking around 100 a year — revealed that it made 45 offers, all of which were duly accepted.
BLP, which takes on 45 trainees annually, said that one of its trainees did not complete the process. The firm added that 14 of the successful 17 will take newly qualified (NQ) jobs in London, two go to Abu Dhabi and one to Berlin. 10 will work in real estate, with the rest split between tax, corporate and litigation. As NQs they will each earn £63,500.
The firm’s training chief, Anthony Lennox, highlighted his pleasure at the willingness of three NQs to go abroad, commenting:
We’ve offered this year’s trainee intake contracts across a range of our practice areas which is pleasing. It is also great that three of our trainees have accepted contracts in Berlin and Abu Dhabi which reaffirms our commitment to offering exciting opportunities across our international offices.
Despite its impressive retention rate, corporate finance specialist Clifford Chance failed to reveal which departments or even offices its new legal talent would be headed to. It also declined to specify if any were on short term contracts.
The firm — which pays its NQs a recently improved £70,000 a year — is the third magic circle firm to announce its autumn retention results.
Earlier this summer profit-powerhouse Slaughter and May revealed it would retain 89% of its trainees, with 33 of a 37 strong cohort remaining post-September. Meanwhile, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer announced last week that eight of its NQs would be heading for the exit, leaving the firm with a somewhat disappointing — by magic circle standards — 83% autumn figure.
It is, however, the Square Mile offices of several prominent US firms that are leading the retention table. Jones Day, White & Case, Shearman & Sterling, Sullivan & Cromwell and Weil Gotshal & Manges have all revealed 100% retention figures this autumn. However, most of these US practices have much smaller graduate intakes than the big English firms.
London-based global franchise law firm CMS Cameron McKenna today announced that newly qualified (NQ) lawyers will receive a 5% boost to pay packets — taking fresh-faced solicitors to the level of dosh their predecessors received pre-global financial crisis.
Trainees also received a dollop of extra cash in today’s round of CMS management munificence.
The firm, which offers around 80 training contracts annually — will boost associate pay to £66,000. Trainees will also receive a welcome cash injection with first-year salaries rising from £38,000 to £40,000 and second-year trainee pay going from £43,000 to £45,000. Back in 2008 CMS was paying its new associates — yep, you guessed it — £66,000.
The 18-office outfit — which falls under the larger European CMS umbrella — will leapfrog some major City players in the NQ pay stakes, including Ashurst and the London office of US franchise rivals Baker & McKenzie.
And the increase to trainee pay will also put the firm in good company, with Washington DC-based Atkin Gump and New Yorkers Cleary Gottlieb.
But today’s development will not worry CMS’s magic circle counterparts. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer — home to the worst paid NQs of the City elite — still offers their junior solicitors £67,500, a full £1,500 more than new legal talent at CMS.
Another magic circle player, Allen & Overy, earlier this month chucked a whopping extra £12,000 at its recently qualified lawyers, taking salaries to £78,500, enough to make some of the US firms in the City look over their shoulders.
Officials at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) have apologised to Alan Blacker — who shot to fame when a Crown Court judge berated him for festooning his gown with Harry Potter-style medals — after the solicitor-advocate complained over the handling of investigations into his practice.
Legal Cheek understands that Blacker — also known as Lord Harley of Counsel — officially complained to the Independent Complaint Resolution Service (ICRS) earlier this year over several issues, including alleged discrimination. The ICRS — a specialist provider of complaint and dispute resolution services — independently oversees complaints regarding the SRA.
Blacker, who is based in Heywood, Lancashire, alluded to the ICRS findings on his extensive LinkedIn page last week, posting a message claiming that the SRA had been “ordered to apologise for not handling complaints of racism and general misconduct properly”.
However, Legal Cheek can reveal that the apology was in relation to a miscommunication regarding a lost file concerning Blacker. The SRA had incorrectly informed the lawyer that a file containing his details had gone missing.
According to the SRA, none of Blacker’s grievances were upheld by the independent complaints body, but the final report did recommend — and not “ordered” as Harley suggests — an apology.
As a result, the SRA wrote to Blacker two months ago apologising for the misunderstanding and any distress caused.
An SRA spokesman told Legal Cheek:
The Independent Complaints Resolution Service has oversight of the way we handle complaints about our service and provides a final independent response to complainants. The ICRS did not uphold Dr Blacker’s complaints. However, it did make a recommendation that we apologise to Dr Blacker for any distress caused when we mistakenly advised we had lost files when we had not. We wrote to Dr Blacker in June to apologise.
The spokesman then addressed issues of alleged discrimination:
We also reminded staff to consider inviting further information from complainants to help us better understand concerns of discrimination that are raised with us, although as we said, Dr Blacker’s concern in this respect was not upheld by the ICRS.
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that the Law Society — which has technical oversight of the otherwise independent SRA — has been told to ask the regulator to release some correspondence between it and Blacker’s charity, the Rochdale-based Joint Armed Forces Legal Advocacy Service (JAFLAS).
A ruling from the society’s freedom of information code adjudicator was handed down at the end of last month, suggesting that the SRA release a series of correspondence and reports regarding the charity. The Law Society does not fall within the scope of freedom of information legislation, but it has adopted its own code of practice, which covers the SRA.
However, the SRA is not obliged to comply with adjudications and it is understood officials are considering the ruling. No detail is known of the substance of that correspondence and reports.
Legal Cheek contacted the charity’s office late on Friday for comment. An unidentified voice simply responded by saying:
The murky world of technology is littered with nasty bear traps — and the Law Society has just fallen into a big one.
Earlier today, Legal Cheek reported on the latest instalment in the Lord Harley of Counsel saga, which included references to a ruling from the society’s freedom of information adjudicator.
Chancery Lane officials decided to redact part of that adjudication — and that is when a modern world glitch bit them in the bum.
In the old days of paper, the Law Society’s lawyers could have simply brought to bear the power of a black felt marker pen. Several applications would probably have done the trick.
However, in the digital world, life isn’t that simple. As one Legal Cheek commentator pointed out, simply applying the redaction overlay is not enough. Unless the actual text is deleted, the words can be seen when the overlay is highlighted.
In this case, it is difficult at first glance to see why the Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority were so keen to keep the redacted text confidential, as when revealed, it hardly sets the pulse racing.
The most interesting discovery unearthed by the tech tip from our reader is that the Law Society has 14 days to cough up the information the adjudicator has recommended be made public.
However, as the adjudicator pointed out, his rulings are only advisory and can be ignored by the powers that be.
Previously:
Solicitors Regulation Authority says sorry to Lord Harley for ‘causing distress’ [Legal Cheek]
Solicitors are being over-taxed this year by £2.4 million, according to the profession’s uber-regulator.
In a strongly worded recent letter to the Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), a senior official at the Legal Services Board (LSB) has questioned why the practising certificate fee is to remain static when the cost of regulating the profession has fallen for the last three years on the trot.
While the LSB approved the joint Law Society-SRA bid to set the PC fee at £320 per solicitor for 2015-16, the main legal profession regulator’s strategy director, Caroline Wallace, expressed concerns that solicitors were being unfairly milked.
Writing to Law Society and SRA chief executives Catherine Dixon and Paul Philip, respectively, Wallace said:
We are pleased that the level of the PCF [practising certificate fee] for individuals and firms will not be increased for 2015-16. Nonetheless, we are concerned that this is against the background of the total SRA budget falling for the third successive year.
Indeed, Wallace went on to point out that the SRA’s budget had fallen despite it handing over ever more cash to fund the Law Society, which effectively acts as the de facto trade union for solicitors.
Wallace also pointed out that the cost of practice was not decreasing despite a reduction in the levy imposed on the solicitors’ profession by the LSB itself as well as a lowering of the Legal Ombudsman’s levy. Likewise, costs at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal had also fallen.
Warned Wallace:
In the context of wider concerns about the cost of regulation, it may become more difficult to justify increasing (or even not decreasing) the level of PCF when the operation expenditure of the SRA appears to be falling.
Wallace added: “collection of fees at the approved level is expected to result in an over-collection of approximately £2.4 million”.
The LSB highlighted the convoluted and complicated funding structure underpinning the Law Society and SRA. Under provisions of the Legal Services Act 2007, the SRA sets the practising certificate fee to cover what is describes as “the Law Society Group budget”, which is actually arrived at by the Law Society Council.
However, the SRA effectively dictates to the council its requirements, which currently account for no more than half the overall budget. The remainder is allocated to so-called shared services between the SRA and the society, as well as funding as much as 75% of the Law Society’s representative functions.
The fact that the SRA budget is falling, and yet the fee has remained static, therefore opens a hornets’ nest within the solicitors’ profession. Commentators have speculated for some time that ultimately the regulator will lose patience with having to do the Law Society’s dirty work by collecting the latter’s funding from practising solicitors.
That conflict probably accounts for the SRA’s approach to queries about the LSB’s warning — which was to push any questions firmly over to the Law Society. However, Chancery Lane declined to comment on Wallace’s concerns that current PC fees could be out of kilter with actual expenditure requirements.
Presumably, the society is keeping its head down as the view among many solicitors is that if the Law Society were forced to raise and collect its own funding through a voluntary membership fee, it would rapidly move from its palatial neo-classical home in London’s Chancery Lane into the history books.
Read the Legal Services Board letter in full below:
Magic circle and other City-based global law firms may have slashed trainee recruitment by as much as 30% since the financial crisis, but one regional alternative business structure appears to be bucking the trend by piling on junior jobs.
Sheffield-based Irwin Mitchell revealed yesterday that 55 wannabe lawyers will slide behind desks at the firm this September. That marks an impressive 37.5% growth on last year’s intake over last year’s cohort of 40 of its trainee slots.
Indeed, last year the firm — which three years ago bagged five ABS licences — boosted its target annual recruitment of trainees from 40 to 50. The latest batch of trainees will be spread across nine of the firm’s offices and will be allocated to all practice areas.
Earlier this year, Solicitors Regulation Authority figures revealed training contracts across England and Wales had dropped significantly. The depressing numbers showed only 5,097 openings were registered between 1 July 2013 and 30 June 2014, a fall of more than 200 on the previous year.
Previously:
Training contract numbers take another tumble [Legal Cheek]
White & Case’s London office is to switch its training contract deal from the University of Law to BPP in a move that will do little to settle nerves at Europe’s biggest law school after it was sold in June for the second time in three years.
The New Yorkers generally take on about 30 trainee solicitors a year in the UK capital. Moving the deal for providing those trainees with the Graduate Diploma in Law and the Legal Practice Course will be a blow to ULaw, which has weathered a series of law firm defections to its arch-rival over the last year. Among those to have switched their business are Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance; Linklaters has, however, remained loyal to ULaw.
Neither of the universities nor White & Case would comment after a report of the news appeared on Myspace-style law firm partners’ chat room Roll on Friday. But a source close to the deal confirmed yesterday afternoon to Legal Cheek that the firm had indeed switched its affections to BPP.
Details of the move leaked out on the heels of an even bigger shake-up to the legal education market as Kaplan Law School confirmed that it was throwing in the towel after eight years in London.
The demise of its GDL and LPC offerings will leave the two big players scrambling for the law firm refugees. Kaplan had deals that covered trainees from nine City law firms and organisations: Bates Wells Braithwaite, Fieldfisher, Holman Fenwick Willan, Ince & Co, Penningtons Manches, the London office of Mayer Brown, Mills & Reeve, Nabarro and PwC Legal.
Earlier this summer ULaw pinched arguably the jewel in Kaplan’s training deal crown, its agreement with top US firm Shearman & Sterling. Will it beat BPP to the rest of the stricken law school’s bounty? Watch this space…
A triumvirate of City law firms has boosted junior solicitor pay with deflation-busting rises that scrape the 9% mark — evidence that while cracking the Square Mile may be tougher than ever, once in, the money shower switches on.
And the cash bonanza is not reserved for young lawyers lucky enough to have bagged jobs with the City’s biggest players, as demonstrated by the dramatic increases at the London office of international firms Mayer Brown and Dentons, and mid-tier City player Travers Smith.
Legal Cheek can exclusively reveal that taking top honours in the latest round of pay increases is Travers Smith. The firm has chucked qualifying solicitors a pay rise of nearly 9% — which is hardly chicken feed at a time when the UK is technically in a period of deflation.
Travers — which offers around 25 training contracts annually — is bumping up qualification pay by £6,000 to £70K.
Next up is the London office of Chicago-founded Mayer Brown. The global firm — which takes on about 15 trainees annually — has awarded newly qualifying solicitors a generous pay rise of nearly 8%. That translates to a £5,000 boost from £64k to £69k.
And finally there is UK-founded international firm Dentons, which has ratcheted up its NQ pay by 7% from £61,000 to £65,000.
First-year trainees at the three firms have also benefited from the good times.
The biggest boost came at Mayer Brown, where first-years have been awarded a £2,500 pay rise taking them to £40,000. Dentons has awarded its newbies an increase of £1,000 — up to £40k. While, first-years at Travers received a comparatively paltry £500 boost, albeit one that took them to £40,500.
The salary hikes come after a host of magic circle and US firm London offices handed out pay rises during the spring and early summer. The top UK firm for NQ remuneration is now Allen & Overy, which pays rookie solicitors £78,500, while the London office of Sullivan & Cromwell heads the pack for US firms, paying NQs £101,500.
Check out the Legal CheekFirms Most List for the full pay rankings.
Previously:
Sullivan & Cromwell shoots to top of UK pay league with record £101,500 newly-qualified solicitor salary [Legal Cheek]
It would be too simplistic to say corporate law firms are full of unhappy and exhausted lawyers.
Some people do thrive there. For them, there is satisfaction in working long hours, tackling mountains of paperwork and taking on tight deadlines.
Some find their work genuinely interesting, while most stick around for the financial rewards. However, for many, the work is gruelling and the money is simply not enough.
Landing a job at a magic circle firm has been the key driver during many years of study and hard work. It’s been a difficult journey up to this point but you’ve done it, you’ve got there.
But then you realise that there are too many “shoulds” at this point. You should be happy, you should be living the dream, and you should be excited by the career prospects ahead. What happens, then, if you’re just not?
The problem is highlighted by a recent study that found two-thirds of lawyers said their jobs do not meet the expectations they had of working in law. The common perception is that the law is a glamorous profession with mammoth salaries, working on interesting cases, having real-life impact and actually making a difference. It’s a well-trodden route to success for high achieving humanities students who aren’t sure what to do.
For many, this image of success turns out to be met by a grim reality of being over-worked, under-valued and unhappy. It’s hard to identify what is the bigger problem. It could be the disappointment of the attractive depiction of law in the media compared with the daily grind of being a lawyer. Or maybe it is the realisation that the things you thought would inspire you do not in fact motivate.
After so many years of hard work towards a certain aim, it is not a sign of failure to say, “actually this isn’t for me”, or “this isn’t what I thought it would be”.
You are not alone in having that thought. More than half of the lawyers who took part in that study said they wished they had embarked on a different career path. You might be one of the few who makes a change. The first step is to admit you’re unhappy.
Having uttered that acknowledgement to yourself, the next challenge is to say it to somebody else. Saying aloud to others “I am not happy” is something of a taboo full stop.
Telling your colleagues “I am not happy in this profession” is going to be an uncomfortable conversation. Some might feel judged that their motivations and the things they find satisfying may be the very reasons you are leaving a career in law. Others could be shaken by the resonance your words have to their own niggling doubts. There is a reason why many people, despite being unhappy, do not consider a career change. It’s not an easy step to walk away from a community, everything you have worked for up to now and, let’s face it, that pay packet.
Someone who has successfully made the change is Karol Corcoran, who shifted from corporate lawyer to become senior marketing manager at Amazon UK. “I left practice to get a more hands on business role,” he relates.
In hindsight, Corcoran acknowledges he should have gone straight into this role, which was more suited to his personality, but like everyone else, it was ultimately the status of the profession that drew him into reading law.
As he took the plunge into a change of career, Corcoran realised that coming from a legal background gave him a distinct advantage. Being a lawyer meant he was able to write great copy, ensure accuracy and high standards, engage in data-driven decision-making and deal with ambiguity.
This is bread and butter to someone who is legally trained,” said Corcoran. “It can feel daunting to leave the structure and safety of private practise, but it can be done. It’s a case of getting your narrative straight — the why and the what you bring — and just backing yourself.
That approach propelled him, like many others, to make the change for the better.
Arming yourself with the knowledge of what motivates you, what you want to gain from a career and what would bring you job satisfaction is massively advantageous. A background in law is a great stepping-stone to finding a job in which you value what you do. Jobs like banking, marketing, business development, journalism, teaching or starting your own business are just some of the options.
It might be a leap into the great unknown as it was for Peter, who moved from being a senior associate practising intellectual property law to setting up his own restaurant.
I hated timesheets with a passion,” he says, “and did not want to spend the rest of my career accounting for every six minutes of my days. I was aware that it would only get harder to leave the older I became, and the more responsibilities I had outside of work.
He continued:
When I left, it wasn’t a hard decision to make, but I was still clueless about how to make it happen.
As far as the money is concerned, don’t forget you were a student in the not-so-distant past and you managed. It is possible to survive on a lot less. Take some time out to try new things. Travel, learn a new skill, meet new people and have some fun.
Writer and social innovator Greg McKeown nearly became a lawyer. Upon reflecting on his ambitions in his final year of the Legal Practice Course, he realised joining the legal profession didn’t make the list. As he puts it:
If we don’t design our careers, someone else will.
Martin Underwood is a former criminal barrister and the course producer at Life Productions, a consultancy that helps lawyers find fulfilling work and take practical action through advice, courses and networking.
Big corporate deals are stalling, sparking fears that the City legal profession, the UK and wider global economies and life on the planet as we know it are about to tank — according to a residential conveyancing solicitor from Tunbridge Wells.
Announcing the apocalypse earlier today from his bird’s eye vantage point as senior partner of 15-lawyer high street firm Cooper Burnett was Jonathan Smithers.
The lawyer — whom the Kent powerhouse firm bills as being “nationally recognised for his expertise”, handling “a wide range of property and clients, from first-time buyers to country properties and estates” — formed his end-of-the-world-is-nigh view after liaising with clipboard toters at an outfit called Legal Monitor.
Every six months LM’s boffins track deals publicised by the UK’s top 50 law firms. And the Man of Kent (or should that be Kentish Man?) is worried by the latest findings.
According to figures, big corporate deals handled by that legal elite tumbled by nearly 14% in the first quarter of this year. The deal-meisters bounced back in Q2 (as they say round corporate boardrooms), but overall, the first half of 2015 was 3.5% down on the equivalent period last year.
There were also worrying figures around how much the deals that were done were worth. The value of all deals slipped by more than 11% in the first Q of this year relative to the previous Q, as City law firms acted in transactions worth some £432 billion.
However, overall value also bounced back to a position where second quarter cash was actually up year-on-year by a shade more than 10% to £512bn.
Nonetheless, Smithers — from his position on the south-east corner of Oxford Circus, clad in doom-and-gloom sandwich board — suggested that we all head for the underground shelters.
“The fall in the number of legal deals in the first half of 2015, followed by the slight pick-up suggest we may see a short-term stalling in the recovery of the UK and international economy,” said Smithers, who is also president of the Law Society, the body that represents solicitors in England and Wales.
The Home Counties and Chancery Lane man also referred to the current crisis in the far east.
The slowdown in China,” he predicted solemnly, “could well accentuate this trajectory.
And frankly, the last thing The Judge fancies is an accentuated trajectory.
This is the first time a Law Society president has encroached on territory normally populated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the governor of the Bank of England and just about every café waiter in Davos during the World Economic Forum.
According to the Legal Monitor report — which the Law Society sponsors — the fall in the total number of deals was widespread across sectors, but energy and utility transactions were especially thin on the ground owing to the tumbling oil prices. Technology, media and telecoms deals were also sparse relative to last year.
However, the researchers found that deals in the finance, banking, manufacturing, and — Smithers will doubtless be relieved to hear — the real estate and construction sectors increased in the first half of 2015.
So, perhaps it’s not the end of the world just yet.
Crime law solicitors’ firms have been forced into a “McJustice approach” of providing a fast-food-like service on the cheap, one of the leaders of current legal aid strike said in a frank interview published earlier this week.
Barrister-turned-solicitor-advocate Jon Black also lambasted what he described as profit-motivated law schools for creating a flood of students, who are bound to be disappointed by the current state of the employment market.
Black — the president of London Criminal Court’s Solicitor Association — told legal affairs blog LegalHackette’s Brief yesterday that too many criminal legal aid firms cut corners by “piling clients high and selling them cheap”.
But ultimately, according to Black, the market will regulate the system without the need for the government’s proposed dual-contracting system. That regime would force a reduction in the number of legal aid-authorised providers by about two-thirds.
Black explained:
There are firms that have gone on for years about the market being too big. There were people in them who trained us how to bill so we could recruit more lawyers, who are now saying there is an over-supply.
The founding partner of King’s Cross firm BSB Solicitors also fired a broadside at the legal education establishment for money-grubbing.
A former Leeds Grammar School boy, who studied English and history at Newcastle Poly before completing the bar course at the Inns of Court School of Law, Black blames deregulation of the universities in the 1990s and the post-graduate legal education system for creating a perfect storm. He told the website:
Law faculties popped up everywhere and the profit-driven provision of education meant over-recruitment at universities. That has been coupled with irresponsible recruitment to the Bar Professional Training Course and Legal Practice Course without warning students that there is no guarantee they will be the next Michael Mansfield or Helena Kennedy.
As announcements of autumn retention rates of newly qualified lawyers cascade from City law firms, rumours abound that money-bags US practices are ram-raiding their top English counterparts to poach young talent.
Legal Cheek’s own comments section has highlighted the issue over recent days with suggestions that not just magic circle and other top English firms fall victim to the tactic. Commentators moot that newly qualifying lawyers at the offices of mid-tier global US firms paying “London” rates are also in the crosshairs of the White Shoe elite in the UK capital.
But is that view just perception, or is the practice a growing reality? Are US law firms behaving like Second World War GIs — seducing English prey with offers of chocolate and silk stockings?
If that is the case, it would seem a dirty trick. Firm A spends tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds in sponsoring, supporting and then training a wannabe solicitor, only to see that investment stroll out the door on qualification, lured by starting salaries at US Firm B that could be more than 30% higher than Firm A’s best offer.
However, London-based legal profession recruitment specialists argue that poaching may be happening more in the minds of trainees and junior lawyers than in reality.
They maintain that US firms were more likely to engage in poaching a decade or so ago, when their London offices were not likely to offer their own training programmes. In those dark days, say recruiters, some Yankee firms definitely would hang about at the school gate on graduation day, whispering offers of all the bubble gum a newbie lawyer could chew.
But those approaches were unsophisticated and unscientific. Then, the managing partners of US firms were tasked with building up numbers and they were content to let the English City firms do the heavy lifting on the training front. However, the Americans still only had a vague idea of what they were buying.
Today, point out the recruiters, the offices of the big US players in London generally offer their own training schemes, with even the likes of Sullivan & Cromwell these days hiring six UK graduates each year. They form the young minds of their future lawyers and therefore it would not make sense for them to take a punt on those trained elsewhere.
It is difficult to see how US firms would identify suitable trainees at rival English practices,” one specialist told Legal Cheek yesterday. “There is a visibility problem.
For Iain Millard of the London office of recruitment agency Chadwick Nott, the relevant issue is not so much US firms poaching young talent, but the ongoing fallout from the financial crisis.
Millard acknowledges that the top end of the City market has recovered fairly well, but there are still issues at some mid-tier firms, which can struggle to retain as many of their qualifying cohorts as they might like.
During the downturn,” related Millard, “those qualifying in September would start getting in touch with recruitment agencies as early as the previous March. They would express concern and doubt over their firm’s ability to keep them on and would want to start casting around for a qualified job as soon as possible. That is still happening to an extent — but not as much.
In any event, the view among recruiters is that while the Yanks are offering a lot of chocolate, they are generally doling it out to their own newly qualified lawyers.
Dechert is the latest firm to throw a deflation-busting pay rise to its London junior lawyers as the Philadelphia-based practice bumped up newly-qualified starting salaries by nearly 9%.
While freshly-minted lawyers at Travers were put on starting whacks of £70,000, those at Dechert — where Miriam Gonzalez (pictured), the wife of ex-Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, is a partner — will now be taking home £74,000.
But juniors at Dechert were far and away the luckiest of the bunch at a further three firms where pay rises were revealed at the end of last week.
The other rises came at international firm Eversheds, which bumped up NQ pay in its London headquarters by 5% to £62,000, and the London office of Addleshaw Goddard, where new qualifiers received a boost of slightly more than 3% to take starting pay to £61,000.
However, Addleshaw associates in the regions were left out in the cold with NQ pay frozen at £38,000. In contrast, NQs at Eversheds’ regional offices bagged an 8% rise to £40,000.
Some trainees also did well. Dechert bumped up first-year pay by £2,000 to £44,000; Eversheds doled out a pay rise of a grand, taking first-years to £37,000 — the same level as Addleshaw trainees, whose salaries will be unchanged in 2015.
Previously:
City law pay bonanza — three firms boost junior wedge by as much as 9% [Legal Cheek]
Silver circle outfit Travers Smith has revealed a strong retention figure of 94%, keeping 17 of its 18 autumn new qualifying (NQ) lawyers.
The firm, which offers around 25 training contracts annually, will place five of its new associates in corporate. Finance and tax will take three a piece while two NQs will be based in the firm’s commercial department. The remaining junior lawyers will be split across dispute resolution, pensions, real estate, financial services and markets.
Travers — which has only two offices, one in the City (pictured above) and the other in Paris — also posted a 94% retention figure this time last year, when it kept 16 of its 17 trainees.
In contrast, London-based international firm Simmons & Simmons has posted a disappointing autumn figure.
The firm, which revealed an encouraging 80% spring figure earlier this year, announced that only 22 of a cohort of 28 actually completed their training. Of those 22 NQs, 19 offers were made, of which 18 were accepted, giving the Moorgate-based outfit an autumn retention figure of just 64%.
It was slightly better news for one of the City’s smaller international firms. Fieldfisher, which offers around 12 training contracts each year, has posted an autumn retention figure of 77%.
The firm announced it would be retaining ten out of a training cohort of 13 NQ lawyers post September. Three trainees will be heading to Fieldfisher’s technology, outsourcing and privacy practice. Competition and corporate will gain two a piece, while real estate, IP and IT/IP litigation will receive a trainee each.
The news follows several pay boosts for lawyers across the City in the past week. Those opting to remain at Fieldfisher will benefit from an improved NQ salary of £62,000, up from £58,0000, while Simmons has increased its NQ pay from £63,000 to £68,000. While last week, Legal Cheek revealed that NQs committing their future to Travers post-qualification would be taking home £70,000, up from £64,000.
Previously:
City law pay bonanza — three firms boost junior wedge by as much as 9% [Legal Cheek]
Norton Rose Fulbright, Macfarlanes and Travers Smith have also joined the scheme, which sees training contract hunters’ achievements “contextualised” in relation to their peers. It will be introduced at the firms next month.
Running the contextual recruitment system is London-based diversity specialist agency Rare Recruitment, which describes the technology as a “ground breaking” tool that “will improve graduate social mobility in the City”.
Rare — which claims the programme is the first of its kind in the UK — says the technique “hardwires social mobility metrics into the firms’ existing graduate recruitment databases”.
Rare’s system uses data from two databases: one contains exam results of 3,500 English secondary schools and sixth form colleges; the other contains 2.5 million UK postcodes. It then combines this information to place wannabe lawyers’ accomplishments in context.
Announcing this morning that Linklaters — which recruits some 110 trainess annually, the most of any firm in the country — had joined the programme, graduate recruitment partner Simon Branigan said:
In selecting some of the brightest minds in the market, we do of course look at academic achievement, but we also deeply value impressive, non-academic achievements.
Branigan went on to explain the attraction of the Rare programme to his firm:
Contextualising an individual’s accomplishments means we can truly understand the situation in which those academic and personal successes have been achieved and how their performance compares to their peers from similar backgrounds, with similar life opportunities; by understanding this we ensure that we are employing intelligent, well rounded individuals from broad walks of life, who will bring different experiences and perspectives to our business.
In July the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found that Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and Slaughter and May each hired around 40% of their trainees from fee-paying schools.
Previously:
Herbert Smith Freehills and Ashurst latest to jump on contextual recruiting bandwagon [Legal Cheek]
Two City firms launch sci-fi recruitment tool in bid to boost diversity [Legal Cheek]
International law firm CMS Cameron McKenna has slashed its trainee numbers by more than 34%.
The London-based global franchise — which last year recruited 76 trainee lawyers — revealed to Legal Cheek that it would reduce that number to 50 for the 2015-16 recruitment round.
The sharp decline in trainee numbers appears to be a delayed consolidation of the firm’s trainee recruitment following last year’s merger with Scotland’s Dundas & Wilson. That deal in May 2014 seems to have created an unsustainable level of trainee intake.
Meanwhile, CMS revealed yesterday that 38 trainees from its autumn cohort of 50 will remain at the firm, a retention figure of 76%. The firm — which operates under the European CMS badge — confirmed that 38 offers were made, all of which were accepted.
The firm declined to comment on its tumbling trainee numbers. However, senior partner, Penelope Warne, was keen to discuss CMS’s current retention rate, saying:
We are very committed to our young top talent in the firm as one of our key strategic priorities. We always endeavour to offer as many newly qualified (NQ) positions as possible. We are pleased to welcome our 38 new NQs who are spread across our wide range of practices and sector groups.
This current retention rate is a marked improvement on the firm’s spring figure, when it was only able to keep 62% of its qualifying lawyers. At the time, the firm blamed the fact many of its NQs had opted for in-house roles or positions outside the legal profession.
Earlier this summer, Legal Cheek revealed that CMS had restored junior lawyer pay to per-global financial crash levels. Trainees received a welcome cash injection, with first-year salaries rising from £38,000 to £40,000, and second-year pay going from £43,000 to £45,000.
Associates also had extra money chucked their way, with NQs taking home an improved pay packet of £60,000, bringing those junior lawyers to the same level as their 2008 predecessors.
Trying to find a Londoner with something good to say about the lump of lard, steel and glass monstrosity at 20 Fenchurch Street is about as easy as putting your hand to a real Cockney these days.
Colloquially known as the “Walkie Talkie”, the 37-storey, 525 ft office block has had a chequered history since its doors were flung open about a year ago.
The building’s bizarre concave design has reflected dangerous levels of heat onto the pavements below; it has been blamed for creating hurricane-style gusts throughout the Square Mile; and its rooftop Sky Garden has been pilloried for being little more than a marketing wheeze that it open to the public in the same way as is the Ritz Hotel.
And now the WT has won Building Design magazine’s Carbuncle Cup award. As the name suggests, it is not a prize that the architect, Uruguayan Rafael Viñoly, will be proudly displaying on his mantelpiece.
Instead, the Carbuncle Cup effectively goes to London’s ugliest building. A distinction that will undoubtedly trigger bemusement round the management committee table at northern powerhouse law firm DWF.
So far, the Mancunian firm — which has 13 outposts across Britain and Ireland — is the only legal practice to move into the Walkie Talkie, although the London office of Houston-based Vinson & Elkins is understood to be taking space shortly.
DWF moved its London mob into the Walkie T last September. A year ago, the firm’s big-wigs had nothing but praise for what has since become one of the capital’s most hated landmarks.
The building “offers unrivalled panoramic views across London,” gushed a DWF statement at the time. Indeed, managing partner and chief executive Andrew Leaitherland went further. The skyscraper provided, he said:
An exceptional working environment. It’s a flexible space designed to encourage agile working, teamwork and great client interaction.
Fast-forward a year and Leaitherland’s mob is housed in a building about which one Building Design commentator lamented:
I now have a new personal goal: to live long enough to see this building demolished.
The notoriety of the Walkie Talkie makes the Manchester firm look a bit like over-excited provincial visitors to “The Smoke”, paying touts over the odds for restricted view tickets to “Mama Mia”, when they could have picked them up at the half-price box.
Having said that, it is far more likely that the canny northerners actually bagged a deal. Media reports indicate that rents in London’s biggest eyesore go for about £69 per square foot — at least six quid more than the City average.
However, while the firm itself will not comment, City scuttlebutt suggests that DWF negotiated a very favourable tenancy deal. So perhaps the partners were not simply dazzled by the hype.
And on the aesthetic point, a firm spokeswoman quipped:
It’s such a shame those outside of the building don’t like it, because for us it’s an incredible location and space and the views over the City are stunning.
To prove the point, she sent Legal Cheek a snap shot photo from her office (pictured above). But does it beat the firm’s HQ in Scott Place in Manchester’s Hardman Street?
The legal profession has donated over £50,000 in less than 24 hours hours to a billable hour appeal for refugees launched yesterday evening by employment silk Sean Jones QC.
The appeal asks lawyers to donate a billable hour to Save the Children to help the charity do its work alleviating the Europe refugee crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers flea countries including Syria, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Jones, of the commercial set 11KBW, launched the campaign after spotting that an appeal by a group of children’s book authors had hauled in over £100,000.
12 hours later and the Lawyers Billable Hour Appeal has hauled in — at the time of publication of this story — £14,355.83. Update 12:10pm: It’s now up to £29,497.05.
With Jones’ big-earning silk pals splashing their cash, some of the donations are pretty hefty, with one anonymous individual handing out £1,000.
But it’s not just the big earners who have been contributing. A host a legal aid lawyers have donated generously, led by criminal barrister Jamie Hamilton who is pledging not just one hour but his entire fee for his appearance in court today.
School-leavers could qualify as solicitors in as little as five years without crossing the threshold of a university or doing a training contract, apprenticeship plans unveiled yesterday revealed.
In the latest move that will dramatically alter the delivery of legal education — and potentially shake to the core the business models of vocational training providers — the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, yesterday published assessment plans and standards for apprenticeships in the legal profession.
The recommended minimum entry requirements for the scheme suggest that as long as school children don’t spend too much time smoking behind the bike sheds and can then talk a law firm into giving them an apprenticeship, they will be able to qualify.
According to the statement yesterday from the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) — the organisation overseeing the process — all that will be required are: five GCSEs, including mathematics and English at grade C or above (or equivalent), and three A-levels (or equivalent) at a minimum of grade C.
As if that were not simple enough, an alternative route involves what the scheme’s developers describe as “relevant employer-led work experience”; a level 3 advanced apprenticeship or level 4 higher apprenticeship in a relevant occupation, such as business administration, financial services, or even legal services; a paralegal or legal executive apprenticeship.
The final alternative — which will provide some relief to those in higher and vocational education — will be via a law degree, the Graduate Diploma in Law, and the Legal Practice Course.
However, it would seem unrealistic to expect students to go through the traditional higher education route to qualify for an apprenticeship when all they need is three mediocre A-levels.
Existing vocational education providers will take some solace from the fact that the apprenticeship scheme will still require some level of structured training and ultimately formal assessment. Yesterday’s government statement said:
Qualification as a solicitor through the apprenticeship standard route will require satisfactory completion of the new centralised assessment provided by one or more independent assessment organisations, appointed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority … Candidates will be unable to complete the apprenticeship, or be admitted as a solicitor, until they have satisfactorily met this requirement.
In the statement, CILEx chief executive Mandie Lavin praised the reforms:
These new, employer-led standards ensure the qualifications will be market driven and fit for purpose and we look forward to working with both legal businesses and learners on delivering these apprenticeships and continuing to encourage a more diverse profession.
A Solicitors Regulation Authority spokeswoman yesterday confirmed to Legal Cheek that once the proposal receives final approval from the regulator’s board, the streamlined process would be on track for implementation next year.
She also confirmed that the process would effectively mean that as long as a school-leaver can convince a law firm to lay on an apprenticeship, qualification could await six years down the road through mostly work-related experience.
That could have a devastating impact on the business models of universities providing law degrees and vocational courses. They are already under pressure as a result of the high cost of legal education; students often finish the process tens of thousands of pounds in debt.
But the reforms could also have an existential impact on CILEx. If the route from school to qualification as a solicitor were streamlined down to six years — while the apprentice route for legal executives is five years — why would students bother with the latter?
Nonetheless, Vicky Purtill, head of qualifications at CILEx, remained confident, telling Legal Cheek:
Law firms may … prefer to train chartered legal executives rather than solicitors, based on the job roles they have available once the apprentice is qualified.
Purtill continued:
Having worked alongside some of the UK’s leading legal sector employers, we are confident that the chartered legal executive pathway will be accepted by the sector. CILEx already has a clear advantage; we have been successfully delivering apprenticeships alongside the CILEx lawyer qualifications for a number of years and now have more than 360 legal apprentices working at over 100 businesses in England and Wales.
Purtill went on to say:
CILEx has also been delivering the chartered legal executive qualification pathway for more than 50 years, albeit not in a formal apprenticeship capacity.
