Report: Salary war and diversity among challenges for Scottish legal firms

Kim Bower

A result of the shortage of talent has seen significant salary uplifts, with even newly qualified candidates being offered significantly higher basic salaries, as exemplified by Pinsent Mason’s recent 35 per cent increase in entry level salaries. In turn this is making it increasingly challenging to fill in-house legal vacancies.

These trends have been highlighted in the sixth annual Salary Guide into Scotland’s legal and financial service sectors from Core-Asset Consulting.

Kim Bower, specialist in legal recruitment at Core-Asset, said: “Firms must be aware of how to attract the best talent over and above their competitors, differentiating themselves by offering flexibility, access to cutting edge technology and clear outlines on progression.

“Job availability now outstrips candidate availability and the legal sector is now in the midst of a ‘buyers’ market’, a situation in which changes according to the underlying economic conditions that shape supply and demand.”

The report also cites a November 2021 survey by the Law Society of Scotland which highlighted gender, diversity and ethnicity imbalance in the legal profession.

While annually around two-thirds of newly admitted lawyers are woman, progression to more senior roles remain a challenge, with females under-represented in senior committee and managing partner positions.

There also appear to be difficulties in attracting male Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background lawyers into the profession with only 28 per cent of BAME solicitors under 30 being male.

Ms Bower added: “Despite encouraging strides taken by the industry on gender, there appears to be ample room for diversity programmes to be expanded and improved in 2022 and further industry work is required to address issues of disability, gender, LGBTQI+, race and social mobility.”