Clifford ChanceThe City’s top law firms are resisting an early move to emulate Clifford Chance (CC) by cutting their assistant salary bands with all the firm’s magic circle rivals this week refusing to rush into copycat moves.

Allen & Overy (A&O), Link-laters, Slaughter and May and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have all indicated to Legal Week that they do not intend to cut pay rates from the newly-qualified benchmark of £50,000 in this year’s pay round.