律师的工资简直高得离谱！

Very easy to get these salaries working at American, magic and silver circle law firms.

Whilst the "working every weekend" horror stories are pretty rare, the working hours are generally long, to the point that making plans during weekday evenings is impossible. Parents Skype or facetiming their kids during the week and only seeing them at the weekend is a regular occurrence.

Expect to do one "all nighter" a month and work one weekend a month. Many firms have beds in the office.

On the plus side these lawyers are well looked after and the working hours are made easier by 24 hr on site catering or takeaway allowances, on site gym, healthcare etc.

You might find /r/uklaw a better place for this question.

Also if you’re working for a firm that pays those salaries, then you’re never going to have any time to spend it so the money piles up...(or you spend it all on cocaine).

The pay routes are generally well worn:


make partner at top firm - 10 years and two marriages later you’re on a million++/year
don’t make partner so leave to make partner at “lesser” firm
switch out after a few years to work at US firm for a few hundred k, never make partner but tell yourself it’s “only for a few years until I save up enough” (or to pay the mortgage)
burn out earlier and work part time and stay on 100k-150k
career change after a few years
fall off wagon

While some biglaw firms pays these salaries on qualification (after two years), all trainees spend the first two years at sub 50k p.a. and most get beasted for it. Investment banking pays more, and earlier, so does consulting. Bear in mind that a solicitor doing wills and estates in a backwater town in the UK will probably never see more than 50k p.a. The salaries you mentioned are exclusively in London, exclusively in high-value practice areas (high value litigation, private equity m&A etc) and there are few jobs.

I wouldn't consider accounting (big 4 etc) as 'finance' and 'tech' can mean a whole host of relatively low skilled work that any most competent comp sci grads can do. There are significantly more grads that go into the broader areas of finance or tech which would bring the average down. Similarly, there are tons of lawyers on low-ish salaries, you're looking at the very top.

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Source, trainee

If you're interested in receiving a more detailed analysis of Solicitor salaries (London firms) have a look at Legal Cheek's Firms Most List

Categories I would suggest looking at are:


TC Salaries Year 1 (doesn't include bonus)
TC Salaries Year 2 (doesn't include bonus)
NQ Salaries (doesn't include bonus)
Partner Salaries (doesn't include bonus)
Arrival Time
Leave Time
Target Hours


Hopefully, this will help give a well-rounded idea of the lives of young lawyers. However, whilst the legal industry looks glamorous, it's plagued by serious underlying issues (see The Guardian). Although if money is your main motivator, see US Lawyer salaries...

I'm reading the Law LLB course right now, and for me, there's a more pertinent issue. There are a lot of students, trainee solicitors and NQs who whisper to themselves "Billings are my religion and money is my God, at least when I fucking pray to my God I get a new Aston Martin out of it". I can't imagine how this frame of mind will lead to a long and prosperous career.

I'm a corporate lawyer at a big law firm and I can give you a summary of what I know:


There are very few firms that pay the big wages and those jobs are hard to get. So when you choose "law" as a career, you are rolling the dice. If you are Oxbridge with good marks, you've got a decent shot. Others are playing a lottery ticket.
You will need to spend two years in a training contract which is a much smaller salary (and you are going to be in London working long hours so a reasonable commute is a must). And many people will make even less as a paralegal for a year or two if they have to wait to get a training contract.
Once you get a big law job, it can be a tough ride for some people. The working hours tend to be long and the work isn't fun. The people you work with are often stressed out and will take it out on you. The hours of the job isn't even the worst part - it's being on call 24 hours day, 365 days a year. I had a client have a full blown meltdown because he called the office at 1 pm on Christmas even and no one picked up. The office was closed because not only was it Christmas eve - it was a bank holiday that year because Christmas was Saturday. I heard him yell all of this at me whilst at my parents house, supposedly on holiday.
The corporate law track is "up or out". You get auto promoted every year so either you learn what you need to be useful at the next level or they will fire you. It's brutal. Not just that, but it takes 5-10 years to master any given practice area. So if you are let go (either by firing or by redundancies) and you haven't mastered your skill, you may be completely out of luck in finding another job. For the first 2-3 years you are especially vulnerable. You know nothing so you are the mercy of another law firm needing another newbie or else you are unemployable.
Even if you are doing well and learn your job, few people make partner at law firms. Big law firms are highly leveraged (with about a 10-20 associate per 1 partner ratio). This means if you look around at your peers, only one in 20 of you are going to make it to the top. My starting class at my first firm had 33 people. One person made equity partner 8 years later.
There isn't a great job market for the people who don't make equity partner. They need to be prepared for major salary readjustments.
The people that make equity partner will be under huge pressure to win clients and business all the time. So many of them are alcoholics it's crazy.


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Anyway, that's the end of my rant. The only reason these jobs pay so much is that no one wants to do them.