RPC increases NQ lawyer salaries to £95k for London commercial and disputes teams, £85k for insurance

Avatar photo

By Legal Cheek on

14

Rises for Bristol NQs and trainees too

Man climbing up coins
City law firm RPC has confirmed a fresh round of pay rises for its junior lawyers, with uplifts across both its London and Bristol offices set to take effect from 1 September.

Newly qualified (NQ) solicitors in the firm’s London corporate & commercial and disputes teams will see their base salaries rise to £95,000, up from £90,000. NQs in the London insurance team will receive £85,000, a £5,000 increase on the previous £80,000 rate. Meanwhile, NQs based in the firm’s Bristol office will earn £60,000, marking a £4,000 boost.

Trainees are also benefiting from the firm’s latest round of salary reviews. In London, first-year trainees will now earn £48,000, up from £46,000, while second years will take home £52,000, up from £50,000.

The 2025 Legal Cheek Firms Most List

RPC’s Bristol-based rookies will also see their pay bumped with first-year rates rising from £40,000 to £42,000, and second year pay moving from £42,000 to £44,000.

The Legal Cheek Firms Most List shows RPC takes on around 14 trainees annually across its London and Bristol offices.

These uplifts come amid a wave of summer pay increases across the legal sector. Firms including Travers Smith, Mishcon de Reya, and Gowling WLG have all raised junior lawyer salaries in recent weeks.

14 Comments

Kirkland NQ

lol imagine being a qualified lawyer and earning only five figures.

Anon

Imagine doing interesting work and still be able to log off before midnight

Anon

I worked at RPC and can assure you the work was frequently uninteresting and I frequently worked past midnight, all for a catastrophically mediocre salary.

Anon

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

Libby

Huge bunching going on. Very small pot of money, they throw it at the NQs, and still they can’t even stretch to 6 figures. Classic RPC.

Alan

Salary bunching at RPC is getting ridiculous — 4PQEs barely earning more than fresh-faced NQs. Morale-boosting!

Anon

Really? How much are 4PQEs being paid then?

4pqe

Can’t disclose the precise figure for confidentiality reasons, but as a 4PQE on comfortably less than £10k above the current £95k NQ rate, I’ll just say this: strong performer, top feedback, and very much not an outlier — it’s a pattern, not a pleading. The talent is there; the comp just isn’t (at least not at market levels). That said, the work remains genuinely interesting and motivating, and the people are nice — for now, that’s Exhibit A in why I stay.

2023 calling

can I have my Kirkland NQ jokes back?

2023 calling...

can I have my Kirkland NQ jokes back?

Former RPCer

My favourite part about being at RPC was working on cases where the NQs on the other side made almost 2x what I did

4PQE considering lateral move

How much is pay at RPC affected by performance against annual hours targets? Asking out of interest as a 4PQE working at a competitor firm with similar salary bunching issues (and in regional office where pay is significantly lower despite same hours target and work expectations as London colleagues…).

Anon

Base salary doesn’t change. At associate level they tend to pay everyone at each PQE the same (i.e. all the 4 PQE associates in my team are paid the same as each other) so I don’t think base salary is really affected by performance, at least not at associate level. If you don’t hit the target hours you just don’t get the bonus.

4PQE considering lateral move

Thanks for the reply! Sounds like a similar situation to the one we have here (Pinsents). There is a new bonus policy which should hopefully make things better, but that doesn’t get around the underlying problems caused by salary bunching and big regional pay differences. It’s sad to know that a low performing London NQ who couldn’t draft their way out of a paper bag is likely making more than a high performing 4PQE in the regions (even at the same firm where client base and target hours are exactly the same). Perhaps if firms were more transparent about their PQE pay rises, there would be less focus on headline NQ rates and the salary bunching situation would be a little less crazy.

Join the conversation

Related Stories