Law Society recommends higher pay for trainee solicitors

Trainee solicitors’ pay should be increased, the Law Society has recommended.

Firms are not legally obliged to pay trainees any higher than the National Minimum Wage (which the government has tried to rebrand as ‘the National Living Wage’ despite it being set way below what constitutes a ‘real living wage’) since a mandatory minimum trainee salary of £18,590 in London and £16,650 outside was scrapped by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in 2014. Nonetheless, the Law Society has continued to annually recommend appropriate salaries for trainee solicitors as a way of encouraging good practice, even though such recommendations are not binding on employers. This year’s recommendation is for trainees’ pay in London to increase 3% to £20,913 a year, and pay for trainees outside London to increase 2% to £18, 547. The recommendations are based on the real living wage set by the Living Wage Foundation, plus the average annual cost of Legal Practice Course repayments.

As for how far these recommendations are observed by the profession, the Law Gazette reports mixed results – a survey of 500 trainees by legal recruitment company Douglas Scott found that 31% of respondents were being paid less than the Law Society’s recommended minimum.