Chrissie Wolfe

Freshfields has upped its NQ salary to £150k a year. Let’s break that down:

🔸 Take-home pay, net of tax and NI (but not student loan or pension contributions) would be £90,532.40 according to Reed.

🔸 Freshfields requires 3 days a week in their London office and the average cost of living as a single person in London is currently £43,728 a year according to HomeViews.

🔸Average working hours at Freshfields are 11.5 hours a day (approximately 2500 a year) according to Legal Cheek.

🔸 That brings it out at around £60 per hour gross pay.

Context is everything. Big salaries come with big demands and the net benefit doesn’t always translate once all things are considered.

Keep an open mind, a smaller salary with more flexibility might actually provide greater overall value…

You know what sucks?

Losing a great paralegal because they choose to qualify as a solicitor.

You know what sucks more?

Being investigated by the SRA for breaching the code of conduct.

Refusing to confirm QWE can amount to a breach of your professional obligations to act honestly, fairly and with integrity in discharging your duties as a solicitor.

Where QWE has been properly completed, you are obliged to confirm it:

🔸Whether or not you were made aware that the individual was using the role as QWE;

🔸Whether or not you consider the individual to be competent to practise (it’s the SQE exam that determines this now);

🔸Whether or not you intend to retain the individual as an NQ within your organisation.

Offering an NQ position is at your discretion, confirming QWE is not.