Elite UK Firms Cap First Year Salaries
As globalization hits the legal profession, we see trends routinely move cross-borders. Therefore, it is worth noting that U.K. firms tend to establish their starting salaries before U.S. firms and, for 2004, the major firms have held firm for the third consecutive year. Freshfields, Slaughter & May, Linklaters, Herbert Smith and Lovells are at £50,000 ($89,385), and Simmons & Simmons, Denton Wilde, Ashurst and CMS Cameron will stay at £48,000 ($85,810). Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, SJ Berwin and Norton Rose have not announced their new pay rates but are expected to remain at £50,000. Meanwhile, the London offices of U.S. firms are continuing to pay slightly above the UKL standard in order to competitively recruit. Shearman & Sterling, for example, is currently at £55,000 ($98,325).

On the other end of the associate spectrum, London firms have successively reduced the number of partnership appointments over the past couple of year. Several Major Circle firms have announced to associates that they will cut the number of new partners in 2004 from the already reduced 2003 levels.

Dress Codes
Over the past couple of years, a number of law firms have attempted to raise their dress codes from the jeans and sneakers level that came with the tech boom. But, with raising temperatures and an improving economy, lawyers and staff have more employment options. We are hearing law firms, particularly on the coasts, talking about again relaxing their standards. One firm advises new hires that the standard for women is “cover tattoos, ditch piercings and no straps thinner than a bra strap.” Other firms seem satisfied if men just wear a collared shirt. The tougher issue for women’s dress is, in the view of many HR managers, not what they wear but how it fits.

International Outsourcing
As U.S. firms look at moving administrative functions to India, Underwoods, a UK
employment and personal injury firm is subcontracting legal work to South Africa where legal education standards are high and salaries are low. The benchmark fee for bulk legal work is R6,000 ($900) per case.

Women’s Issues
It comes as little surprise that time is the most important issue to most female lawyers, according to a study by the Georgia Association of Women Lawyers. A three year study of 37 Atlanta law firms found that the annual attrition rate among women lawyers was 15 to 19 percent while the rate for men was 11 to 12 percent. Most full time lawyers who left a law firm did so for better schedules, not for a larger paycheck. Only 22 percent of respondents reported that they left for “more money” in contract to 33 percent who left because they “wanted fewer hours” and 19 percent who “wanted a different schedule.” One third of Atlanta lawyers in private practice are women. At the current rate of growth, women will make up 50 percent of Atlanta lawyers within 10 years.

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