London Law Firms May Face a Reckoning After ‘Pay Mess’ in 2022

London’s biggest law firms paid generously to secure the brightest young recruits they could this year. Meeting those salary pledges next year will be a lot tougher with revenues from deal making expected to slow dramatically.

Many of the UK’s top law firms upped salaries for newly-qualified lawyers to as much as £100,000 ($120,600) this year to narrow the gap with top US firms in London. But the value of initial public offerings in the UK capital, a key source of cash for law firms which advise on these deals, fell in the first half of 2022 to the ...