The Brief reviews BCL Legal’s 2024 salary survey and reflects on a year in which many regions and practice areas once again saw meaningful pay rises.
Since BCL last published its salary survey in 2022 the country has become familiar with a new term: “cost of living crisis”. Not everyone in the legal profession will be sensitive to increases in the price of pasta or sunflower oil, but the aggregate effect of price rises, and of the consequent wage inflation across the board in the economy, is not something that any business that employs people has been able to ignore.
Although it set the mood music until the earlier part of 2024, inflation in the wider economy was far from the only factor driving increases in remuneration for lawyers – and certainly doesn’t explain figures like the 35 per cent increase in the mode (most commonly paid) salary being offered to salaried partners specialising in insurance in many UK regions.
The real drivers are microeconomic: discipline-specific supply-and-demand. Some of this is driven by, for example, a recent uptick in regional corporate activity, while in other cases – demand for procurement and employment lawyers being cases in point – it is a response to legislative changes (respectively, the Procurement Act and the forthcoming workers’ rights legislation).
Private practice summary
The UK private practice market has seen “steady” hiring through 2024, according to BCL Managing Director Mary Nowell in her overview. There have been fewer “opportunistic” hires than in previous years, with firms tending to recruit in response to a specific requirement.
Looking at the factors driving future developments in the market, Mary points to ESG (environmental social and governance) issues and AI. She also identifies, in particular, increased demand for employment lawyers in second half of 2024 as a result of Government’s planned workplace reforms.
Local factors also play a part in regional markets. For example, technology and life sciences are big drivers in the Thames Valley and around Cambridge, while real estate and related disciplines are leading the way in the North West and North East.
Residential conveyancing and insurance
You can’t keep the British housing market down for long, and growing demand for residential conveyancing lawyers has been one of the big stories of 2024 – with increasing salaries to match.
All regions have seen growth according BCL Director Joanna Marklove’s market summary, with counter-offers increasingly common, but the South West has seen some truly eye-watering increases in the salaries on offer, particularly at the junior level.
The mode paralegal salary in the South West is now 43% higher than in 2022 and the mode remuneration for junior conveyancers is up by 54 per cent over the same period – an astonishing leap from £24,000 to £37,000.
The big driver in the insurance market, meanwhile, has been the extension of the fixed recoverable costs regime (FRC) since October 2023. This has seen firms concentrate on more serious and catastrophic injury work, with increased salaries across the board for those with this experience.
Beyond the partner rates quoted earlier, the fastest pay growth in insurance practice has been at the junior end of the London market, with the mode NQ salary 23 per cent higher than in 2022, up from £50,000 to £65,000.
In-house
The in-house market has been quieter compared to 2023, according to BCL Managing Director Mark Levine, although it has begun to pick up in Q4 – and a number of regions have seen growing numbers of lawyers moving from private practice to in-house roles.
Mark believes the increased costs of using external lawyers, driven by salary increases and the hike in employers’ national insurance announce in the Budget, could be a driver for in-house recruitment in 2025.
Salary-wise, the majority of in-house roles saw increases in 2024.
In the North West, average salaries for NQs to six years PQE rose by 12% compared to the previous year, and by 10% for those with six-years-plus PQE. In Yorkshire and the North East these figures were 21% and 6%, in the Midlands 9% and 8%, and in the Northern Home Counties 7% at all levels of PQE.
London
Some regions have seen a revival in transactional disciplines but, as BCL associate director Gishan Abeyratne explains in his market overview, banking and corporate have both been quieter than usual in London over the past couple of years. There have, though, been signs of recovery toward the end of 2024.
This reflects, at least in part, London’s role at the upper end of the corporate market, nationally and internationally. Firms and offices in the regions are, however, more likely to draw a significant proportion of their corporate work from owner-managers timing sales in response to increases in capital gains tax.
As usual, though, the salaries on offer in London outstrip those available anywhere else in the UK and Ireland.
The mode NQ salary for City and international firms in London was £90,000, and for the London offices of national firms it was £75,000.
By comparison, the highest mode NQ salaries for international, national and commercial firms in the UK outside London were in the North West and South West, at £60,000, with most regions not far behind this figure. International and top-tier firms in Dublin were offering a mode NQ salary of €75,000, with mid-tier firms a shade lower
Within London the usual stratification of salaries between the different tiers of the market was maintained. The upper-end salary for a five-years PQE lawyer in a West End or boutique firm was £115,000, compared to £120,000 at a national firm, £160,000 at a City or international firm, £180,000 in the Silver Circle, £191,000 in the Magic Circle and, way out in front, £285,000 at the London office of a US firm.
Scotland
As BCL Associate Director Alex Carpenter explains in his market review, the corporate, commercial and family markets have all been quiet in 2024, although they began to pick up toward the end of the year.
Many firms have, nonetheless, increased their NQ salaries in Scotland by around ten per cent year-on-year.
Alex also identifies increased demand for dual-qualified lawyers as a particular tend, following recent cross-border M&A activity (both English firms expanding into Scotland and vice versa).
Ireland and Northern Ireland
The Dublin market continues to thrive, with remuneration for salaried partners, for example, comfortably outstripping the best on offer anywhere in the UK or Ireland, other than London, at both the top and mid-tier levels.
In his market round-up BCL Associate Director Sean Cully identifies corporate, tech and data protection, renewable energy and real estate as the key areas driving growth.
However, the salaries on offer at international, national and top tier firms in Belfast are, in general, around half those that are available in Dublin. This partially reflects Dublin’s standing as an international financial centre, although the fact that Belfast legal salaries trail all regions of the UK cannot be ignored.
There are, though, positive signs, with salary increases since 2022 at most levels of experience, particularly around two-to-three years PQE.
Read the BCL team’s market round-ups
- In-house
- Private practice
- Insurance & residential conveyancing
- London
- Ireland
- Scotland
- USA
- The South
- Bristol
- The East Midlands
- The West Midlands
- The North East
- The North West
Read BCL’s 2024 salary surveys
In-house
Private practice – regions
- International, National & Commercial Firms
- Regional and Niche Commercial Firms
- General Practice
- Insurance
- Conveyancing
- Document Review - Hourly Rates of Pay
- Scotland
- Northern Ireland
- Republic of Ireland
