LG and Trowers break inflation barrier with trainee pay rises

LG and Trowers & Hamlins have increased their trainee solicitor salaries by inflation-busting rates, although first-year trainees are still paid marginally less than the industry average.

From September, first-year trainees at LG will take home £36,000 – 20 per cent up on last year’s salary of £30,000. Second years will be paid £40,000 – a rise of 17.6 per cent on last year. However, the firm has frozen its newly qualified (NQ) salary rate at £62,000.

A graduate recruitment officer at LG said the decision was taken to freeze the NQ rate because it had increased “quite substantially last year”, from £53,000 to the current rate.

Meanwhile, Trowers & Hamlins has announced that first-year trainees will be paid 11.1 per cent more from next year, receiving a total of £35,000.
Second-year trainees at the top 40 law firms will take home £38,000, 13.4 per cent up on last year’s ­figure of £33,500.

The median starting rate for trainee solicitors in 2008 is £36,500, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters’ summer survey.