Exclusive - Slaughter and May to pay 5% bonus
30 October 2009
RollOnFriday can exclusively reveal that Slaughter and May will be paying a 5% bonus to its lawyers.

Insiders have confirmed that the bonus will be paid in December. However it is just half of the 10% bonus that the firm paid last year: and it was accompanied by an announcement that the firm would be freezing its salaries.

Some of the firm's lawyers are pretty hacked off. Slaughters has done a huge amount of lucrative work helping the government to sort out various knackered banks, its associates are all flat to the boards and the firm is widely rumoured to have had one of its best ever years. Against that background a pay freeze and a 50% bonus cut  make the partners look as tight as a duck's arse. 
 

Quack

Still, the firm didn't make any redundancies and by RollOnFriday's maths a 3PQE lawyer will still pocket £4,600 - which in this market isn't too shabby. Graham White, the firm's Executive Partner, told RollOnFriday that "parts of the firm are indeed very busy, but it is still an uncertain economic environment and we don't believe our clients, who are operating under great pressure, would think it proper for us to be awarding pay rises or large bonuses".