Well, the 2010 pay round for City assistants has largely already been set, and we didn’t even make it out of February. That is because Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – having quite rightly led the market in early 2009 by halting its assistant lockstep – last week decided to restart the track. And it will be very surprising if this policy is not widely adopted by rivals in the spring when most firms get around making a decision on assistant pay.
Of course, even restarting the track means Freshfields has effectively taken a step out of the ladder, ushering in a lower entry level salary of £59,000, against its pre-recession rate of £66,000.
