Weil Gotshal cuts NQ salary to £85,000

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

• playftseforme | 7-Jul-2009 11:57 am

  Disappointed, the market determines BA cabin crew salaries too. If you don't like the market, go and live on a small island in the Pacific. Your Chancery Lane address suggests, however, that you're taking your chances with capitalism. Sorry it isn't working out for you.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Political Realist | 7-Jul-2009 12:07 pm

  @Anonymous, 11.45 am
  
  There may be a difference in how immediately US clients want a response, but there is generally a negligible difference in terms of general workloads on lawyers at US firms compared to those at London City firms. Certainly not enough to justify paying an NQ £85k!
  
  In my experience, the response demanded by US clients is typically no different to the response demanded by Russian or Middle Eastern clients. Such clients usually have little understanding of how realistic such timing may be, and often don't care what the response is. They just want it quickly and believe that as they are paying for the service, they should get it instantaneously. The number of times clients have turned round to me and expected an amended document to be sent out the minute they provide their (generally useless) comments...

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Anonymous | 7-Jul-2009 12:16 pm

  playftseforme - I agree with your point about working hard and (sometimes) getting what you deserve. but you have to admit that for very many who don't have the good fortune at the right time, it won't matter how hard they work, these opportunities just won't come their way?

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Anonymous | 7-Jul-2009 12:56 pm

  I qualified in March 2009 and joined a FSA regulated company in the City. My salary in slightly under City rates (private practice) but I have no billable targets and leave the office at 6pm everyday. Working in house is definitely the way forward!

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Disappointed of Chancery Lane | 7-Jul-2009 1:20 pm

  @playftse
  
  I think you may have missed my point, just slightly.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Anonymous | 7-Jul-2009 1:23 pm

  playftseforme - for someone who quite obviously has an incredibly high opinion of himself and his so called intelligence, he has completely missed the point that the previous poster was trying to make.
  
  The sort of vile person that unfortunately I come across too often.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Anonymous | 7-Jul-2009 1:50 pm

  playftseforme - the parents of BA cabin crew probably couldn't afford to send  their kids to Eton or play polo with high court judges or whatever.... looking down your nose at people who are trained to save your life in case of emergency and who are paid a pitiful wage for doing so suggests to me that you are more than slightly out of touch with the real world. What really makes your lift more important???

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• playftseforme | 7-Jul-2009 2:48 pm

  I must apologise for not attending Eton.
  
  As for the rest of the comments above, as usual there's a lot of huffing and unargued indignation as soon as someone compares City pay to nurses' pay and the like.
  
  Pointing out that the market determines salaries and that's it's up to you to make the best of it hardly amounts to looking down one's nose at anyone. It's merely stating the obvious. If you don't like it, vote for Scargill and nationalise the entire economy. At least then we'd all be poor together.
  
  The cause of the lower paid would be better served by posters able to argue their case. Hissy fits as above just make you look silly. (By the way, are you still banking those City pay cheques?)

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Lee Hull | 7-Jul-2009 3:29 pm

  I knew I should have been a Solicitor instead of a Barrister.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Anonymous | 7-Jul-2009 3:31 pm

  The BA cabin crew may not have taken the opportunities afforded to them, but I'm sure they understand English grammar ("that's its" in the third paragraph)

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment