Trainee Salaries for Solicitors

Player_86

Does anyone know what are the current trainee salaries for the Big 5 commercial law firms in Dublin?

I've heard €32k mentioned, but an acquaintance recently signed a training contract with one of the Big 5, and it was €38k.

Also, why are Irish firms so secretive about their salaries in comparision to, say, the UK firms? Is it a reluctance to start a salary war?

Thanks.

hada

one friend signed to mccann as a trainee, she's on €40,000 p/anum. have another friend who just got Arthur Cox awhile back, he's on €33k(ish) with €5,000 ontop of that to spend on furthering his education.

basically it varies from firm to firm, but law society has all the details here:

http://www.lawsociety.ie/documents/education/hbs/salaries.pdf

Dandelion6

hada wrote: »

law society has all the details here:

http://www.lawsociety.ie/documents/education/hbs/salaries.pdf

Those wages are ridiculous. How on earth does anybody survive on that for two years if they don't have a mammy and daddy to live at home with. It's obviously a scam by the legal profession to get an endless supply of low-wage labour.

hada

Dandelion6 wrote: »

Those wages are ridiculous. How on earth does anybody survive on that for two years if they don't have a mammy and daddy to live at home with. It's obviously a scam by the legal profession to get an endless supply of low-wage labour.

the work trainee solicitors isn't actually worth that much - because they are only training. a senior partner with fry put it quite simply (if not arrogantly) to me a while back "trainees aren't important to the firm at all, it's the solicitors they become after that are".

basically, you're paid for what you do. in a local rural firm, you won't do much besides photocopy, attend the odd court hearing and general things any monkey could do, hence the low wage. while in a larger commerical firm, while the work may not be intellectually stimulating all the time, you're atleast being worked your socks off, hence the higher pay.

johnnyskeleton

Dandelion6 wrote: »

Those wages are ridiculous. How on earth does anybody survive on that for two years if they don't have a mammy and daddy to live at home with. It's obviously a scam by the legal profession to get an endless supply of low-wage labour.

Being paid to go to college (and possibly having your fees paid to boot) is not bad. You could easily live on €396.60 or €472.50 per week, and you're likely to have a significant wage increase after your apprenticeship.

hada wrote: »

in a local rural firm, you won't do much besides photocopy, attend the odd court hearing and general things any monkey could do, hence the low wage. while in a larger commerical firm, while the work may not be intellectually stimulating all the time, you're atleast being worked your socks off, hence the higher pay.

I'd disagree in that working for a small firm will entail more responsibility and a wider variety of work, whereas in a larger firm you will be doing very specialised work (e.g. tax, intellectual property etc) which will be supervised by a partner. The larger firms pay more because they have more money to throw around and because they can bill out apprentice hours at a very high hourly rate.

hada

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I'd disagree in that working for a small firm will entail more responsibility and a wider variety of work, whereas in a larger firm you will be doing very specialised work (e.g. tax, intellectual property etc) which will be supervised by a partner. The larger firms pay more because they have more money to throw around and because they can bill out apprentice hours at a very high hourly rate.

I figured after posting that I would get that response, but was too lazy to change it! I meant the post to be of a more general sentiment, namely that bigger firms do work you quite a lot harder in the relevant "seat" in which you're in (be it m&a, corp, banking, private, etc..), while most rural firms haven't you under such pressure with regards workloads, etc.. A lot of the work you do will under your own control, not so much as part of a team as in the bigger corporate firms.

but hey, it's all up to where you'd like to work op, as a trainee wage should only be one of the things you consider (albeit one of the more important things), other factors such as the type of traineeship offered, the type of firm, whether you want to do the ppc I and II in dublin or cork should also be noted!

Duffman

hada wrote: »

the work trainee solicitors isn't actually worth that much - because they are only training. a senior partner with fry put it quite simply (if not arrogantly) to me a while back "trainees aren't important to the firm at all, it's the solicitors they become after that are".

I'm not sure how true that is. Trainees are racking up the billable hours like everyone else and you can be sure some client is being charged multiples of what they're paid.

hada

Duffman wrote: »

I'm not sure how true that is. Trainees are racking up the billable hours like everyone else and you can be sure some client is being charged multiples of what they're paid.

trainee friend in big five is billing at between 80-100euro an hour. And I meant the actual type of work they do - i.e. not spear heading the big deals, controlling part of teams, etc as a solicitor in one of those firms do, and not the actual monetary value of the work they do.

Johnny Utah

There seems to be a massive gap beteen the salary of a solicitor in a top 5 firm and that of a general practice solicitor with similar skill and experience. This gap is also illustrated in the wages of trainee solicitors.


I was told by a solicitor in a small country town to stay away from general practice as it was not worth it, and to try and get into corporate law if at all possible. The only problem is that it is nearly impossible to get into any of the top 5 corporate firms without excellent academic grades and/or a contact in there.

thecoolfreak

Duffman wrote: »

I'm not sure how true that is. Trainees are racking up the billable hours like everyone else and you can be sure some client is being charged multiples of what they're paid.

Corporate law firms would be paralysed without the trainees. They play a very important role in the smooth running of a firm. I think what that partner in Fry's said was rubbish and i know at least 3 of the big 5 don't have that attitude

shansey

do people really work for little or no money or is the talk of little or no money jst a reference to minimum wage? these days if offered a poorly paid position would it be foolish to turn it down and maybe just suck it up and get a weekend job?

dats_right

hada wrote: »

basically, you're paid for what you do. in a local rural firm, you won't do much besides photocopy, attend the odd court hearing and general things any monkey could do, hence the low wage. while in a larger commerical firm, while the work may not be intellectually stimulating all the time, you're atleast being worked your socks off, hence the higher pay.

You seem to be making quite a habit of talking of talking complete nonsense!
I really must concur with m'learned friend JohhnyS..

Trainees in small firms gnerally have much greater autonomy, responsibility, client contact (without somebody holding their hand) and diversity of experience. For good or bad you will have the opportunity of running your own files and making your own decisions. Whereas, in a commercial firm you will undoubtedly be working on deals/transaction of greater monetary value and hence the real reason why you are paid more. But, in a commercial firm the trainee will get very little responsibility and much like the newly and not so newly qualifieds who will have no experience of running files or making any meaningful decisions. In reality the monkey analogy holds truer in respect of commercial trainees as their roles and tasks are very limited, such as reading through voluminous documents, or carrying out other fairly menial tasks on the very periphery of deals.

johnfás

I'd guess the big firms are going to reduce the salaries to their trainees in line with the reduction in their fee income which they must now be experiencing anyway.

Amazotheamazing

dats_right wrote: »

You seem to be making quite a habit of talking of talking complete nonsense!
I really must concur with m'learned friend JohhnyS..

Trainees in small firms gnerally have much greater autonomy, responsibility, client contact (without somebody holding their hand) and diversity of experience. For good or bad you will have the opportunity of running your own files and making your own decisions. Whereas, in a commercial firm you will undoubtedly be working on deals/transaction of greater monetary value and hence the real reason why you are paid more. But, in a commercial firm the trainee will get very little responsibility and much like the newly and not so newly qualifieds who will have no experience of running files or making any meaningful decisions. In reality the monkey analogy holds truer in respect of commercial trainees as their roles and tasks are very limited, such as reading through voluminous documents, or carrying out other fairly menial tasks on the very periphery of deals.

True, I've too much responsibility in my firm! (small firm)

A good few of my mates in big 5 firms are basically runners and photo-copiers.

stepinnman

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

True, I've too much responsibility in my firm! (small firm)

A good few of my mates in big 5 firms are basically runners and photo-copiers.

Couldn't agree more - whilst of course everybody's experience is different I'm firmly of the view from my own experience and from that of friends in all sizes of firms that it is in fact the trainees in the "big 5" that most accurately fit the 'Trainee Monkey' stereotype. The reality in the larger firms is that you are, to a certain extent pigeon-holed, with almost literally no responsibility for final decisions as well as constant supervision. Whilst I'm sure this type of training makes for technically proficient Solicitors it has to dull the spark of ingenuity in most trainees as well as making for a less flexible employee at the end of the day.

Towards the end of my apprenticeship I had responsibility for upwards of 300 files incorporating all areas of the law. Whilst this level of responsibility and pressure can be intimidating at first it is a fabulous way to learn and, I believe, truly separates the wheat from the chaff.

Whilst I'm on a mini-rant I find it incredible that the 'big 5' are still paying their trainees such ridiculous sums, especially in the current climate when they seem indecently eager to drop as many of the newly qualifieds as soon as they qualify.

In my opinion one reason for so many of the newly qualifieds (n.q's) being let go is the equally ridiculous starting salaries for the said n.q's. Harping back to earlier posts in relation to P.A. McDermott's interview on Pat Kenny, whilst I don't entirely agree that the partners in the big firms have some sort of social and moral obligation to keep on their trainees, the fact that they insist on paying ludicroulsy high salaries to the n.q's necessarily limits the numbers they will/can retain in more straitened times.

Surely the time has come for one of the big 5 to significantly drop their starting salaries for n.q's so as to enable them to retain more and for longer. The cold harsh reality is that all but the most pig-headed of n.q's will accept such a reduction at the current time for some sort of security of tenure, be that 1 or 2 years.

There seems to be no reason other than prestige for the payment of such high salaries to trainees and n.q's (especially trainees). It might be said that the high salaries are offered in an effort to attract the best of the best but I doubt that even a reduction to the official Law Soc rates would result in any significant reduction in the number and quality of applicants to the 'big 5'. The fact of the matter is they could drop their trainee solicitor salaries by at least €10k and add that to the pot for n.q's. The trainees would still be earning more than 90% of those in Blackhall at that rate. Cutting a similar amount from the salaries of N.Q's, allied with the reduction in trainee salaries, would also allow for the retention of more of them and for a longer, or at least a defined, period.

hada

dats_right wrote: »

You seem to be making quite a habit of talking of talking complete nonsense!
I really must concur with m'learned friend JohhnyS..

dats_right, as this is just a message board and as I'm not entirely omniscient, I can only talk from my experience.

Now you may disagree with what I have to say, but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

For every person you meet who says they would rather train with a small firm, you will meet another person who would rather a traineeship with bigger commercial firm.

God forbid someone should prove you're view isn't always right one of these days :rolleyes:

Amazotheamazing

hada wrote: »

dats_right, as this is just a message board and as I'm not entirely omniscient, I can only talk from my experience.

Now you may disagree with what I have to say, but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

For every person you meet who says they would rather train with a small firm, you will meet another person who would rather a traineeship with bigger commercial firm.

God forbid someone should prove you're view isn't always right one of these days :rolleyes:

Have you actually worked as a trainee solicitor?

Tbf to Dat's Right, he's only describing what 99.9% of trainees go through and would agree with.

hada

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

Have you actually worked as a trainee solicitor?

Tbf to Dat's Right, he's only describing what 99.9% of trainees go through and would agree with.

When I was an undergrad I spent two months in a smallish firm in my home town. (West of Ireland).

I've also interned at a top 5 Irish commercial firm, the summer before last. Not to mention many of my close friends are currently training/finished in both rural and Dublin firms.

Any other rings you want me to jump through to have my opinion validated? Perhaps every time a person posts, they should attach a full CV to the end of every comment we can verify if they have valid grounds to post on?

This is a discussion board. I took the time to add my 50c to the discussion.

With regards trainee wages, Maples offer probably the highest, or at least they claim to offer Magic Circle wages.

LK are offering 16,000/anum this year to trainees. One would earn more in supermacs.

Player_86

hada wrote: »

With regards trainee wages, Maples offer probably the highest, or at least they claim to offer Magic Circle wages.

LK are offering 16,000/anum this year to trainees. One would earn more in supermacs.

Maples do not offer the highest trainee salary. McCann's, A&L Goodbody and William Fry are higher, MOP are the same, Cox is less (unless you include the bursary for further education, which makes it higher).

C222

Maples are higher than frys anyway, a good bit higher.

johnfás

Does anyone even know what they'll offer this year? It could be considerably different to previous years given various factors at play.

I have an offer of a job from one of the aforementioned firms and have not been given a figure yet so I would imagine the same applies to a number of the larger firms.

dazza21ie

This thread really just sounds so silly. There are so many people out there deperate to get a training contract they wouldn't really care what they get paid during their apprenticeship. Some are willing to go the training period unpaid.

hada

Player_86 wrote: »

Maples do not offer the highest trainee salary. McCann's, A&L Goodbody and William Fry are higher, MOP are the same, Cox is less (unless you include the bursary for further education, which makes it higher).

maples offer €40,000. €2,000 more than McCann are offering this year.

paulanthony

Dandelion6 wrote: »

Those wages are ridiculous. How on earth does anybody survive on that for two years if they don't have a mammy and daddy to live at home with. It's obviously a scam by the legal profession to get an endless supply of low-wage labour.

These are simply minimum guidelines by the Law Society and firms are under no onus to stick to them, only not to go below them. Far from it being a scam it protects trainee's, some of whom may feel pressured to work for even less than this in order to get their apprenticeship finished. Were the guidelines not in place I'm sure this would be happening a lot.

hada wrote: »

the work trainee solicitors isn't actually worth that much - because they are only training. a senior partner with fry put it quite simply (if not arrogantly) to me a while back "trainees aren't important to the firm at all, it's the solicitors they become after that are".

basically, you're paid for what you do. in a local rural firm, you won't do much besides photocopy, attend the odd court hearing and general things any monkey could do, hence the low wage. while in a larger commerical firm, while the work may not be intellectually stimulating all the time, you're atleast being worked your socks off, hence the higher pay.

The main reason for the difference in pay is not to do with the quality of the job either trainee does. It is simply due to the fact that trainees in large corporate firms earn more money for their firm than their counterparts in small firms. If a trainee bills €100 per hour they will only need to bill for 600 hours to earn the firm €60,000. If you divide this over 30 weeks (allowing for time spent in Blackhall) it's only 20 hours per week. If you take away a salary of €38,000 and maybe €15,000 for education, this leaves €7000 for other costs. That is a very conservative billing estimate and shows trainees should at least justify their existance. Maybe trainees in large firms are underpaid!

dats_right wrote: »

You seem to be making quite a habit of talking of talking complete nonsense!
I really must concur with m'learned friend JohhnyS..

Trainees in small firms gnerally have much greater autonomy, responsibility, client contact (without somebody holding their hand) and diversity of experience. For good or bad you will have the opportunity of running your own files and making your own decisions. Whereas, in a commercial firm you will undoubtedly be working on deals/transaction of greater monetary value and hence the real reason why you are paid more. But, in a commercial firm the trainee will get very little responsibility and much like the newly and not so newly qualifieds who will have no experience of running files or making any meaningful decisions. In reality the monkey analogy holds truer in respect of commercial trainees as their roles and tasks are very limited, such as reading through voluminous documents, or carrying out other fairly menial tasks on the very periphery of deals.

I think the generalisations about the difference in responsibility/autonomy etc between small and large firms are not true across the board. Every large firm will have partners who are good and partners who are poor at teaching and giving their trainees quality work and responsibility. Similarly in small firms, some trainees will get great experience and training while others will not.

The comparisons are also pointless in some ways as the nature of the work in large corporate firms differs hugely from that in small firms. Saying that trainees in small firms get responsibility for their own files and this means they are better trained is simply wrong. Many cases in large firms will have, for example, one partner, two solicitors and two trainees working on it. Some partners tend to treat trainees like qualified solicitors in giving them work - thus giving them great experience and exposure to the case. Obvoiusly a trainee will not be looking after a €250m aeroplane leasing contract on their own!

johnfás wrote: »

I'd guess the big firms are going to reduce the salaries to their trainees in line with the reduction in their fee income which they must now be experiencing anyway.

I think they are more likely to maintain current levels but take on less trainees. No firm will want to be the first to drop salaries and risk not getting the best trainees if the others leave them as they are. They might have less money to pay salaries if they have less income. They will have less income if they have less work. If they have less work they will need less trainees.

Player_86 wrote: »

Maples do not offer the highest trainee salary. McCann's, A&L Goodbody and William Fry are higher, MOP are the same, Cox is less (unless you include the bursary for further education, which makes it higher).

From what I've heard this is accurate.

hada wrote: »

maples offer €40,000. €2,000 more than McCann are offering this year.

I'll allow Player_86 to respond to this but from what I have seen before this is not the case, unless changes have been made very recently.

Player_86

C222 wrote: »

Maples are higher than frys anyway, a good bit higher.

hada wrote: »

maples offer €40,000. €2,000 more than McCann are offering this year.

I have the offer letters in front of me as I type, and McCann's is €2,000 higher than Maples. Having said that, the Maples offer was made at the end of the summer, so I cannot rule out the possibility that they have upped it to €40,000 since then - but I'd be hugely surprised.

I also have my brother's Fry's offer letter in front of me from last year, and it is higher than Maples. But, again, it may have been reviewed and lowered.

I agree that talking about trainee salaries is a bit pointless, by the way. But I've come across a lot of people who have claimed to know the correct figures when they simply don't know them.

Again, I emphasise that the figures that I have are accurate, but if anyone is telling me that they have been changed since I received my offers, then fair enough.

Sangre

Maples were the highest last year, they recently had a pay cut of 10%. A drop from 40-36 (i think)

Rhonda9000

hada wrote: »

I took the time to add my 50c to the discussion.

50c :eek: that's way too much it's only supposed to be $0.02 No wonder they're up in arms

drkpower

paulanthony wrote: »

The main reason for the difference in pay is not to do with the quality of the job either trainee does. It is simply due to the fact that trainees in large corporate firms earn more money for their firm than their counterparts in small firms. If a trainee bills €100 per hour they will only need to bill for 600 hours to earn the firm €60,000. If you divide this over 30 weeks (allowing for time spent in Blackhall) it's only 20 hours per week. If you take away a salary of €38,000 and maybe €15,000 for education, this leaves €7000 for other costs. That is a very conservative billing estimate and shows trainees should at least justify their existance. Maybe trainees in large firms are underpaid!

There is one reason and one reason only why big firms pay significantly more - to attract the best candidates who will ultimately become top-quality partners and therefore continue the income for the firm; there has been a 70+% increase in trainee salaries in the past 4-5 years in the Big 5 as they strived to outdo each other in attracting the best talent (althouh that may obviously settle a bit now....).

The billing thing is secondary; fair enough, billing rates for trainees are circa €110 but more often than not, trainees are very poor time recorders/billers and even when they are, their time will often be written off or subsumed into solicitors time (as solicitors, unlike trainees, are judged on time recorded/billed) so their hours worked rarely translate into fee income.

Duffman

drkpower wrote: »

There is one reason and one reason only why big firms pay significantly more - to attract the best candidates who will ultimately become top-quality partners and therefore continue the income for the firm; there has been a 70+% increase in trainee salaries in the past 4-5 years in the Big 5 as they strived to outdo each other in attracting the best talent (althouh that may obviously settle a bit now....).

This is exactly the reason why we won't see massive cuts in trainee salaries. There is already intense competition for good candidates among large firms and the differences between them are unlikely to be more than 1 or 2k.

drkpower wrote: »

The billing thing is secondary; fair enough, billing rates for trainees are circa €110 but more often than not, trainees are very poor time recorders/billers and even when they are, their time will often be written off or subsumed into solicitors time (as solicitors, unlike trainees, are judged on time recorded/billed) so their hours worked rarely translate into fee income.

Trainees aren't always poor at billing and time recording. You'll find that there are few things large firms are stricter about. What people keep forgetting it that trainees represent a great deal for firms, even in the face of falling revenues.

In some large international firms trainees can bill close to €500,000 in a year. Their salary is of course a fraction of that.

nuac

Re trainees being billed out at €100 an hour - do the clients know and accept that?

drkpower

Duffman wrote: »

In some large international firms trainees can bill close to €500,000 in a year. Their salary is of course a fraction of that.

Not sure about that - usual target for a solictor/partner in ireland is approx. x5 times salary - a figure of 500K would be extremely unusual.