Articles From the Team

Scotland private practice legal salary review – 2022

From our Scotland team, Alex Carpenter

Salaries across the Scottish legal market have always varied greatly depending on the type of firm.

Across the internationals, salaries at the NQ level range from £50,000 to £69,000. However, recently, a proportion of the larger national Scottish top tier firms have increased their starting salaries to remain competitive, up to £54,500.

Mid-tier firms have increased NQ salaries to between £44,000 and £47,000 in order to attract quality candidates. Smaller regional firms are slightly lower, with the average NQ salary between £33,000 and £44,000.

Hybrid model

Flexible and hybrid working looks as though it is here to stay, with most firms offering a split of both office and home working. The average across firms seems to be two to three days in the office.

A lot of candidates seem to prefer home working, however we are noticing a slight shift among certain firms who are trying to encourage employees to visit the office more often. Whether or not this becomes more widely implemented is yet to be seen.

Practice areas have mostly remained busy, with a lot of demand in areas such as commercial litigation, contentious and non-contentious construction, corporate, real estate and banking. However, areas such as employment and commercial have slightly slowed over the past year, with competition for positions high, even in a candidate driven market.

An area that has seen significant demand amongst the international firms recently is restructuring and insolvency, both on the non-contentious and contentious side.

Connect with our Scotland team manager Alex on LinkedIn