Our view.. pack your White & (suit) Case, and get ready to see the world

White & Case’s London office is one of the most venerable in the City, having been around since 1971. So it's safe to say that it looks set, along with competitors Shearman & Sterling and Weil Gotshal, to be here for good. After a decade of rapid expansion, the firm now employs 380 lawyers in the UK. No small fish, this one. Internationally, too, W&C is in the top ten of US firms - and near the top half of that.

And its lawyers just to be extremely well paid. Trainee rates may be lower than at some of its competitors at £41k, but it’s a chunk more wedge than the Magic Circle and flies from £72k at NQ to the best part of £150,000 for a lawyer with five years PQE. Add to this top quality international work, a bonus that kicks in once associates beat their target of 1,750 chargeable hours and a guaranteed overseas seat for trainees and it looks like a cracking deal.

Inevitably it’s not all beer and skittles: over the past couple of crunchy years, the firm culled 15% – 20% of its global partnership together with some 200 associates and 200 support staff. But insiders gave the London office points for having been “very transparent about what’s going on” and noted that it had been "handled pretty well". Not that that's much comfort to those who lost their jobs, and even some of those remaining call the management "dysfunctional". Things look like they're picking up, though, and an 94% NQ retention rate in September 2010 is at the very top end of the City scale.

The workload is tough - we're told that in certain departments "leaving before 8 is frowned upon". But they’re not universally brutal (given the dough), and there’s a “good team spirit among associates” and the office is described as having a "really relaxed atmosphere", even if the IT support is a bit shonky. The firm makes a big play of taking diversity very seriously – even if it's still “not an easy place to be a senior lawyer and a woman”. The Broad Street offices are very swish (albeit with extremely slow and "unpredictable" lifts), there are plenty of opportunities for extra-curricular drinking and historically some of the best biscuits in the City (although the rest of the nibbles leave a bit to be desired).

For more information on White & Case click here.