Willkie raises NQ lawyer salaries to market-topping £180k

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By Legal Cheek on

1

£10k boost

Man receiving cash bonus
The London office of US firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher has raised the salaries of its newly qualified (NQ) lawyers to a market-topping £180,000.

The move equates to an extra £10k, or just under 6%, putting the firm’s junior lawyers on the same level as their counterparts at three fellow US firms — Davis Polk & Wardwell, Gibson Dunn and Paul Weiss.

The Legal Cheek Firms Most List shows Willkie offers around seven training contracts each year, with trainee salaries starting at £60,000 and rising to £65,000 in year two.

The news comes just 24 hours after fellow US firm Ropes & Gray confirmed it had raised pay for its London NQs from £165k to £170k.

The 2026 Legal Cheek Firms Most List

1 Comment

Interesting

That’s quite interesting. Does anyone know how the scale goes after that? INB4 “oh, it’s Cravath”. No, not every US firm runs Cravath in London (Cleary, Weil, Ropes, etc, do not).

What’s important is what FX rate they’ve used if they do (floater, fixed) or if they don’t, how it scales up after NQ level.

Anyone know?

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