After a four-year hiatus, assistant salaries in London are on the march again. In November, both Allen & Overy (A&O) and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer revived the practice of staging a winter – as well as a spring – review of pay rates. Both firms increased their bands by around 5%.
Then came news from the US that a pay war had broken out on the West Coast and was spreading across the country – just as had been the case six years ago, when the tech boom fuelled a flurry of pay rises across the globe.
