Hogan Lovells bumps junior lawyer pay packets by 5% to £75,000

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By Thomas Connelly on

Trainees will take home an extra £1,000

Global practice Hogan Lovells has boosted the pay packets of its newly-qualified (NQ) London lawyers to £75,000.

The firm — which offers around 60 training contracts annually — has chucked an extra £3,500 at its fresh-faced associates, equating to a boost of just over 5%.

Legal Cheek’s Most List shows that Hogan Lovells’ NQs are now £3,000 better off than their counterparts at Baker McKenzie and Norton Rose Fulbright (£72,000), and just £2,500 behind the junior lawyers at elite magic circle outfit Linklaters (£77,500).

Hogan Lovells’ trainees have also had extra cash chucked their way. Those in the first year of their training contract will now walk away with £44,000, up from £43,000, while those a year ahead will take home £49,000, up from £48,000. All increases are effective from 1 May 2017.

In a statement released earlier today, Hogan Lovells said:

We currently operate a merit based pay model with broad salary bands to ensure that we are able to take into account an individual’s performance when determining salary within the relevant salary band. In addition, our lawyers have the ability to earn significant bonuses based on chargeable hours and/or a discretionary bonus.

The firm racked up a spring retention score of 78% (23 out of 29) earlier this year, and was one of the stand-out performers in Legal Cheek’s 2016 Trainee & Junior Lawyer Survey. It bagged As for training, quality of work, peer support, partner approachability, office, perks and secondment opportunities.

The modest money move comes in the same month Hogan Lovells revealed it was re-evaluating the way it assesses its lawyers’ performances. The new approach — which is currently being trialled across a number of the firm’s offices, including London — replaces the more traditional annual review with a “continuous feedback” system.

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