Pay cut at Freshfields and frozen at White & Case
13 February 2009
Both Freshfields and White & Case have announced that they are freezing the pay levels of their London associates.

Freshfields has gone a step further and actually cut the wedge its NQs will get from £66,000 to £59,000. Kevin Hogarth, the firm's Director of HR, told RollOnFriday that no-one would get a pay cut as trainees who qualified last September would still be paid the old rate. He stressed that bonuses would still be paid as usual, and said that whilst the firm couldn't make any promises for the future it had no current redundancy plans.

White & Case hasn't cut its London NQ rate, which still stands at a very healthy £78,000, but all fee-earner salaries have been frozen. Oliver Brettle, the firm's London Executive Partner, said that this was a sensible step to take given the current climate. The firm made 3% of its global workforce redundant last autumn, but Brettle confirmed that the London office currently has no further redundancies planned.

A frozen associate yesterday

Pay freezes are of course seriously unpopular - particularly as both firms are still posting record revenues. But with the exception of sacking four real estate associates last September, Freshfields has managed to keep all its staff. Most of the associates who've got in touch with RollOnFriday have said that they'd rather sacrifice a few grand a year than go down the Linklaters route of seeing one in five of their colleagues shown the door...
   
This will affect lawyers throughout the City - if an outfit as big as Freshfields can do this it's a certainty that plenty of other firms will follow. But if it means they can continue to hold off redundancies it could be a fair solution to the downturn.