Weil Gotshal cuts NQ salary to £85,000
Share
Weil Gotshal & Manges’ City arm has become the latest law firm to take the axe to its newly qualified (NQ) salaries.
Weil Gotshal & Manges’ City arm has become the latest law firm to take the axe to its newly qualified (NQ) salaries.
Trainee solicitors due to qualify with the US firm in September 2009 will see their pay reduced by 5.6 per cent from £90,000 to £85,000.
Salaries for all other associates will be frozen, meaning those who qualified in September 2008 will have their pay frozen at £90,000 while March 2008 qualifiers will continue to receive £92,500. Trainee salaries were excluded from this pay review.
Lawyers with two years post qualification experience will also have their salary band frozen at between £90,000 to £98,000.
Weil Gotshal is one of the most generous employers in London in terms of salaries but its decision to reduce NQ pay will create a bigger gap between it and rival US firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, which has decided to leave its NQ salary unchanged at £92,000.
Standing at £96,970, Latham & Watkins’ NQ salary is believed to be the highest in London.
View results 10 per page | 20 per page | 50 per page |
Readers' comments (61)
Neil Ireland | 7-Jul-2009 8:32 am
How on earth will they manage on such a meagre salary (not)?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Baby Farks Mageezak | 7-Jul-2009 8:34 am
Is this supposed to be some form of bad news? I think anyone who's newly qualified is lucky enough to have a job let alone an excessive salary.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 7-Jul-2009 9:20 am
Nightmare. I'd love this story to hit the national press alongside stories of BA cabin crew having their salaries cut to £11k and thousands of autoworkers getting laid off.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
playftseforme | 7-Jul-2009 9:37 am
BA cabin crew didn't do as well at school and may not have been to university (and are unlikely to have done well at a good one). That there's the market you keep hearing about. Clients want educated, self-disciplined individuals advising them, not people who went out on the razz in Burnley town centre the night before their GCSEs, with predictable results.
If you weren't aware that getting ahead requires having a strong CV, consider yourself disabused.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
HootsMon | 7-Jul-2009 9:38 am
I was nearly sick in my morning coffee just then.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Metallica | 7-Jul-2009 10:11 am
Those who work for Weil are highly educated. So the market has decided these individuals are worth £85K. Good for them, I wish I was on £85K.
The real sticking point is if a Weil trainee due to qualify in Sept starts complaining about how low this salary is. Then you can say - what a bell end
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
BigPig | 7-Jul-2009 10:13 am
@playftseforme People like you make me sick.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Disappointed of Chancery Lane | 7-Jul-2009 10:55 am
Yep, the free, undistorted market has determined Weil's salaries, while anyone on less than a subsistence wage deserves to be there because, having had exactly the same opportunities, they chose to be lazy.
Incredible, but I've grown to expect these kinds of attitudes from fellow lawyers.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
playftseforme | 7-Jul-2009 11:11 am
BigPig, then I suggest the City isn't for you.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 7-Jul-2009 11:45 am
If you think of the hours most of them were doing to get it (at least up until last year) then I would say no thanks. I think there's still a difference between the demands of US clients compared to UK ones in terms of how immediate they want a response
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment