Last month Quinn Emanuel, a global law firm with headquarters in Los Angeles, became the latest to increase salaries for newly qualified lawyers employed in London: its starting rate rose to £180,000, matching other elite US firms operating here. UK “magic circle” firms including Linklaters and Clifford Chance have also upped salaries for this group, to £150,000, which is still a lot less than the partners in these firms, who typically take home £2m or more a year.
But at what price do these stellar salaries come?
Read more below.
If they’re passionate about law then I don’t see there being much of a problem, but at the same time even passion for a subject may be worn down by stress and burnout
As someone who has chosen legal services as their career path, I believe it can be worth it, but not for your whole life. A solicitor needs to dedicate most of his time to their career, work during weekends and do a stressful job every single day while also needing to be locked in at all times. This gets quite tiring, so I believe that at a certain age it would not be so bad to switch to a different industry!
Once you’re on a path like this it can be hard to step away - the salary is a big tie-in, and relinquishing this will not be easy.
That said, there are plenty of people who make a change to a different track having established themselves both professionally and financially, from high-paying careers in law, consulting or investment banking particularly (from examples personally known to me).
The key to doing this is careful planning, alongside being clear on your goals, and the ability to delay gratification - ie being prepared to sacrifice immediate pleasure for a long-term aim. Someone working in a high-pressure law career in their 20s to their mid-30s could be in a good position to secure themselves financially and professionally to switch to working for a non-profit in their late-30s, for example.
Wow, it’s really eye-opening to see how the legal profession is grappling with mental health issues. Leah Steele’s story is so powerful, and it’s clear that the pressures in law are intense. I’m curious—how do you think the shift in attitudes among younger lawyers towards work-life balance might impact the future of the legal industry? Will firms need to change their entire structure to adapt to these new expectations?
