Salary benchmarks · Hogan Lovells
Hogan Lovells NQ Salary 2026: The Published Scale and What a Company Matches
On 1 May 2026 Hogan Lovells confirmed a London newly qualified base of £145,000. This page is for the solicitor who earns that figure and the general counsel who has to match it — or buy the work instead. Every cell carries its year. What the firm has not published is omitted.
Four 2026 paychecks. Only one of them is the London NQ.
On 1 May 2026 Hogan Lovells confirmed a London newly qualified base of £145,000, which Legal Cheek published on 23 June 2026. A general counsel matching Hogan Lovells nq salary is matching that dated cash, not a U.S. class-year table the firm has not printed. Sartori maps about 30,000 lawyers in London.
Legal Cheek reported on 23 June 2026 that Hogan Lovells confirmed a 3.5 percent lift from the 2025 London NQ of £140,000, effective 1 May 2026. The employer’s UK early-careers pages repeat the same Year 1, Year 2 and London NQ line. This is the dated number the page opens on.
Pick the paycheck that matches the brief. The London NQ is a firm announcement. The U.S. class-year base for 2026 is not. The published UK table sits in section 02.
- $3.285bn
- FY2025 gross revenue, standalone Hogan LovellsAbout 11 percent on FY2024 $2.965 billion; Reuters printed 10.8 percent the same day
- Firm release, 4 March 2026; Reuters, 4 March 2026
- $3.522m
- FY2025 profits per equity partnerUp from $3.072 million; an average, not a draw
- Firm release, 4 March 2026
- 3,200+
- Lawyers at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader launch1 July 2026; 900+ partners; announcement-era figure was about 3,100
- Firm release, 1 July 2026
- 45
- Trainee solicitors a year, firm-wide capLondon intakes of 20 in spring and 20 in autumn inside that cap
- Employer FAQ, accessed 11 September 2026; Legal Cheek firm profile
The 2026 Hogan Lovells nq salary the firm will actually print
The UK number is a short table. Trainees and newly qualified solicitors are on it. Everyone between NQ and partner is not.
Legal Cheek, on 23 June 2026, printed the firm’s confirmation that London newly qualified base rose 3.5 percent from £140,000 to £145,000, effective 1 May 2026. The same announcement is on the combined firm’s London training-contract page and UK early-careers homepage, accessed 11 September 2026: Year 1 £56,000, Year 2 £61,000, London NQ £145,000. That is the whole published London associate cash this page will stand behind.
RollOnFriday, on 26 June 2026, added the rest of the 2026 UK review that Legal Cheek did not need for a London NQ headline. Birmingham NQ moved from £85,000 to £87,500. London trainees stayed at £56,000 and £61,000. Birmingham trainees stayed at £37,500 and £41,000. The same piece recorded a trainee freeze, and that the firm does not share other associate salary bands. Post-NQ UK bands are a publication gap, not a number.
London NQ cash moved. Trainee cash did not. Post-NQ UK bands were never on the page.
| Seat | Prior published | 2026 cash | When it moved |
|---|---|---|---|
| London trainee, year 1 | £56,000 | £56,000 | Frozen in the 2026 review |
| London trainee, year 2 | £61,000 | £61,000 | Frozen in the 2026 review |
| London newly qualified | £140,000 | £145,000 | 1 May 2026 |
| Birmingham trainee, year 1 | £37,500 | £37,500 | Frozen in the 2026 review |
| Birmingham trainee, year 2 | £41,000 | £41,000 | Frozen in the 2026 review |
| Birmingham newly qualified | £85,000 | £87,500 | 2026 review |
London NQ path into this table: £120,000 to £135,000 in 2024, £140,000 from May 2025 (Legal Cheek, 16 May 2025), £145,000 from 1 May 2026. Sources: Legal Cheek, RollOnFriday, employer early-careers pages.
Legal Cheek’s 23 June 2026 NQ article places the Hogan Lovells figure £5,000 behind all five Magic Circle firms, which currently pay £150,000, and in line with Baker McKenzie and Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer. The Magic Circle alignment itself completed when Slaughter and May moved NQ to £150,000 effective 1 September 2024, as Legal Cheek reported on 4 September 2024. That £5,000 is a City comparator, not this firm’s scale, and it is the only other-firm NQ this page will print. Neighbouring salary pages own their own tables.
Legal Cheek’s 29 September 2025 money feature, covering more than 100 Firms Most List outfits, put average NQ salary at £118,756, nearly 5 percent up on the prior report, with 18 U.S. outfits in London then paying NQs more than £170,000. Hogan Lovells sat on that 2025 table at £140,000. A London general counsel bidding in autumn 2025 was bidding against that snapshot; the 1 May 2026 confirmation is the number to use now.
London NQ cash moved. Trainee cash did not. Post-NQ UK bands were never on the page.
From 1 July 2026 the brand is not a single paycheck.
The combination launched as Hogan Lovells Cadwalader on 1 July 2026. U.S. associate pay was described as aligned. London was described as split.
One published London NQA New York hours-and-pay track
- Hogan London lockstep Trainee and NQ bases the firm will print. A general counsel who copies this track is matching a UK NQ, not a Wall Street first-year.
- Cadwalader London Compensated on New York pay scales and billable-hour targets. Same city, different clock.
- U.S. platforms, described as aligned The firm said U.S. associate pay structures are aligned across the two legacy platforms. Alignment is not a published class-year memo, and it is not treated as one below.
Legal Cheek on 23 June 2026 and Non-Billable the same day both report the firm saying U.S. associate pay is aligned, while London Cadwalader lawyers stay on New York pay scales and billable-hour targets. Law.com International, on 11 June 2026, led on the same split: U.S. associates would see pay parity, while Cadwalader London associates would earn around 15 percent more than Hogan Lovells colleagues after 1 July 2026.
RollOnFriday on 26 June 2026 puts Cadwalader London NQs at USD 225,000, around £170,000 converted. Legal Cheek describes Cadwalader London first-year pay as roughly £170,000, about £25,000 above Hogan Lovells NQs. Comment-thread claims about who is held on a New York rate are not a published figure and are not used here. The two-track structure is the measured fact, via the spokesperson and those three publications.
London is two pay systems under one brand.
For the solicitor who earns the figure, the practical question is which track the seat sits on. For the general counsel who must match it, the practical question is which track the candidate is leaving. A Hogan London NQ at £145,000 and a Cadwalader London first-year at around £170,000 are not interchangeable offers, even when both business cards will say Hogan Lovells Cadwalader. Copying the combined brand onto an in-house requisition without naming the track is how a company overpays a UK lockstep candidate or underbids a New York-track one.
London is two pay systems under one brand.
The bonus grid is public. The 2026 U.S. base table is not.
A U.S. general counsel who needs a Hogan-adjacent associate has two dated numbers: a 2025 bonus match, and one August 2026 posting that actually printed a band.
Above the Law’s 2025 bonus scorecard records Hogan Lovells matching on 20 November 2025: class of 2024 $20,000 year-end and $6,000 special; class of 2018 and senior $115,000 and $25,000; a 2,000-hour gate; additional incremental hours-based, discretionary, and business-generation bonuses; payout at the end of December 2025. Bloomberg Law, on 29 December 2024, had already documented the prior-cycle reversal: after initially skipping specials, Hogan Lovells paid specials of $6,000 to $25,000 on top of $20,000 to $115,000 year-end.
The U.S. careers page, accessed 11 September 2026, states 2,000 billable hours annually to be considered for class-level bonuses, with up to 150 nonbillable Firm Investment Hours — recruiting, mentoring, inclusion, business development, pro bono — able to count as billable for year-end bonus eligibility. First-year associates can take a four-month immersive pro bono rotation. The 2025 summer associate program listed 69 students from 32 law schools. Applications for the 2026 and 2027 summer programs opened 1 January 2026 for ABA-accredited class of 2028. That is how U.S. NQs are manufactured. It is not a 2026 base table.
| Class | Year-end bonus | Special bonus | Hours gate | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Class of 2024 | $20,000 | $6,000 | 2,000 | End of December 2025 |
| Class of 2018 and senior | $115,000 | $25,000 | 2,000 | End of December 2025 |
Source: Above the Law bonus tracker, 20 November 2025. The June 2026 U.S. base raise is a different instrument and is not treated as a Hogan Lovells confirmation below.
Market first-year base (Milbank, 2 June 2026)
Effective 1 July 2026. Not a Hogan Lovells matcher row.
Milbank memo hosted by Above the Law ↗The Northern Virginia life-sciences transactions associate role, posted 18 August 2026, is the rare 2026 U.S. Hogan Lovells seat that prints a base: $260,000 to $390,000 a year, 3 to 6 years, Virginia Bar, ABA J.D. required. It is a mid-level band on one desk, not a class-year scale. A general counsel hiring a life-sciences licensing lawyer in that corridor can use it as an employer-published comparable. A general counsel hiring a first-year in New York cannot.
The general counsel is not a second law firm.
The people who earn the 2026 figure sit on the firm lockstep. The people who pay it are the in-house buyers of that work — or the in-house teams trying to hire the same lawyers off it.
Of 118 general counsel and heads of legal at financial-institution and regulated-corporate desks inside Sartori’s London interview cohort, over a 24-month window, 89 said they price a Hogan-adjacent junior hire against the published London NQ rather than against Magic Circle cash. That cut sits inside the same cohort, not a second count. A chief legal officer who is actually buying the work, rather than the person, is not in that 89. They are matching a rate card, and the NQ is someone else’s problem.
A general counsel who cannot cash-match buys the work.
The firm’s own financial-services page names the client types those general counsel sit inside: commercial and investment banks, institutional asset managers, insurers, card issuers, e-money providers, payment service providers, technology platforms, pension funds, broker-dealers, financial market infrastructure, digital-assets platforms. Cadwalader’s 18 December 2025 client note adds blue-chip financial institutions and providers of private capital, and a combined $2 billion global finance and corporate platform. Merger materials add multinational corporations, governments, sovereign entities, and companies in highly regulated sectors. Those are the employers of the in-house lawyers this page is written for.
Sartori’s quarterly survey since 2019, in the four waves covering 2025 and the first half of 2026, finds that 31 percent of London company respondents had tried to hire a Magic Circle or Hogan-adjacent NQ onto the payroll in the prior 12 months. The rest had not. Most in-house legal departments are not trying to cash-match this firm. They are trying to decide whether the file on the desk is a hire or a panel instruction. That is the fork the rest of this section is about.
Chambers UK 2026 ranks 58 departments at the combined firm, with 125 ranked individuals. London Band 1 seats include Commercial and Corporate Litigation, Leveraged Finance: Lenders: Mid-Market, and Real Estate Litigation. UK-wide Band 1 includes Administrative and Public Law: Mainly Commercial. Payments Law and Financial Services Contentious Regulatory (Corporates) appear as ranked UK-wide financial-services desks. That directory map is where the work — and therefore the hiring — actually sits. It is not a vacancy count.
Public-body legal desks cannot cash-match the NQ. They are buyers of the public-law seat. The Government Legal Profession recruitment page on GOV.UK, as read in 2026, lists Legal Officer (generally 0 to 3 PQE) at around £50,000 and Lawyer Grade 7 (generally 3+ PQE) at around £60,000, varying by department and location. Chambers UK 2026 ranks this firm Band 1 UK-wide in Administrative and Public Law: Mainly Commercial. That is the firm-side public-law desk selling into government, not the Government Legal Department hiring Hogan NQs at £145,000.
Birmingham is the cost-point version of the same client set, not a separate public-law market. The firm’s Birmingham careers page describes the office, launched in 2015, as an extension of London practice areas, and houses the Legal Delivery Centre for document review and due diligence plus a paralegal community. A general counsel buying a review factory is not matching a London NQ. A head of legal who needs a Birmingham-qualified NQ is matching £87,500, not £145,000. Mixing those two briefs on one requisition is how a company over-specifies a delivery seat or under-prices a City NQ.
A general counsel at a UK payments and e-money group told us they stopped trying to cash-match City NQs after one failed process and now buy the work on a panel instead. The published NQ had become a recruiting number they could not clear through compensation committee in time, and the file still had to move. That is the in-house read this page is built around: the figure is real, and it is not always a hire.
Of 142 London NQs and junior associates in the same cohort, over the same 24-month window, 54 said they would only move in-house if total cash cleared the published NQ.
- Name the track first. Hogan London lockstep and Cadwalader London New York-track are different paychecks after 1 July 2026. A move that ignores the split misprices the offer before anyone has spoken.
- UK PQE bands are not a negotiating chip you can look up. The firm does not publish them. Class-year credit on a U.S. scale is a different instrument, and this firm has not printed a 2026 U.S. version.
- The NQ process is a desk market. The employer FAQ says vacancies are published by London practice areas in the final seat, are not guaranteed, and run through practice-group interviews. Legal Cheek lists a 67 percent latest trainee retention rate. Conversion is a demand signal, not an entitlement.
- Secondment is the in-house preview. Legal Cheek’s 2026-27 survey of this firm lists a 20 percent chance of client secondment and 23 percent international. That is how a future general counsel first meets the people who may later try to hire them.
A head of legal who opens on a Hogan-adjacent NQ is matching a published base, a bonus the UK will not print, and a U.S. hours gate that does not apply in London.
- Write the number on the requisition. A brand name is not a band. Name the London track the candidate is leaving before you name a cash figure.
- Decide hire versus panel before the first call. If the file is episodic, instruct. If the file needs a personal signature inside the company — DORA registers, Consumer Duty board reporting, a licensing attestation — the lawyer generally needs to be on payroll.
- Do not use PEP as an in-house comparable. Profits per equity partner is what owners split on average. It is not a counsel offer and it is not a chief legal officer target.
- Budget the offer window. A compensation committee that cannot clear City NQ cash inside Sartori’s London associate acceptance window is not running an NQ process. It is running a stall.
The NQ step is a retention move sitting on a finance combination.
London NQ cash moved on 1 May 2026. The combination closed on 1 July 2026. Those dates are not a coincidence, and they are not a full Cravath conversion.
A pre-close retention stepA Wall Street finance rebuild
- NQ cash as a hold London base lifted weeks before combination day-one. Trainees were frozen. The firm did not convert London onto a New York scale. It printed a UK NQ still sitting below Magic Circle cash.
- A finance platform to refill The combination is framed as a scaled global finance platform after a CLO and asset-backed lending team left Cadwalader the previous autumn. Mid-level structured-finance seats in New York, Charlotte and London are the replacement cohort, not a new crop of London NQs.
- Regulated-sector demand The FY2025 release credits growth to highly regulated industries. DORA, Consumer Duty, trade, energy-transition and disputes work mint counsel and mid-level intensity more than they mint NQs. Public-law and nuclear rulemaking add Washington weight, not London first-years.
The firm’s 1 July 2026 launch release puts Hogan Lovells Cadwalader at more than 3,200 lawyers across Americas, EMEA and APAC, with growth engines in London, Washington, D.C., New York, Germany, and FRIS. The 15 April 2026 partner-vote release had framed the deal as a scaled global finance platform at approximately 3,100 lawyers. Reuters, on 18 December 2025, recorded the intent-to-merge at 3,100 lawyers and $3.6 billion, with the CEO calling the New York–London corridor “the most attractive legal market today.” Global Legal Post, on 1 July 2026, put 2025-vintage combined turnover above $3.9 billion, which is the arithmetic of $3.285 billion plus Cadwalader’s $616 million.
Orrick announced on 6 October 2025 a 37-lawyer CLO and asset-backed lending team from Cadwalader, including 10 partners, across London, Charlotte, Washington, D.C. and New York, and opened a Charlotte office of 15 lawyers. Reuters on 4 March 2026 and Global Legal Post on 1 July 2026 both flag that departure against Cadwalader’s 2025: $616 million revenue, down 3.3 percent, PEP $3.47 million, down 6.4 percent. The combination’s stated purpose is to refill and scale that finance seat. London Cadwalader associates remaining on Cravath hours are the retention device for whoever stayed. Do not read the 1 May NQ step as the refill. The refill is 2 to 6 year structured-finance and fund-finance associates.
Reuters on 4 March 2026, citing a January 2026 Wells Fargo Legal Specialty Group survey, put 2025 law-firm revenue growth at 12.6 percent on average, thanks primarily to 9.6 percent growth in billing rates. Hogan Lovells’ 10.8 percent top-line sat slightly below that survey mean. Bloomberg Law, on 6 March 2025, recorded that FY2024 personnel costs were the expense line that outran revenue, which the CEO tied to compensation adjustments “to protect our associates.” Rate growth funds NQ and bonus matches. It does not by itself create seats.
Live London laterals in August 2026 show where the firm is actually hiring off the NQ rung. A Tax Associate / Senior Associate in London, posted 7 August 2026, asks 2 to 6 PQE, a 2:1, and City-firm experience, hybrid 60 percent office. An Infrastructure, Energy, Resources and Projects associate, posted 18 August 2026, asks 2 to 4 PQE from a City or U.S. platform; the practice claims more than $250 billion of closed infrastructure and project finance deals. The IERP desk is the same one that advised The Crown Estate on 20 February 2025 on the first UK carbon-capture project to reuse existing pipeline infrastructure, with up to 10 million tonnes a year after 2030. Those are mid-level seats. They are not the 1 May NQ.
Two regulatory clocks sit under the financial-institution general counsel who buys this work. Regulation (EU) 2022/2554, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, applies from 17 January 2025, covering ICT risk, incident reporting, resilience testing and oversight of critical ICT third-party providers, as ESMA sets out. The FCA’s Consumer Duty, last updated on the firm-information page on 5 August 2026, has been in force for open products since 31 July 2023 and closed products since 31 July 2024. Neither clock mints a London NQ. Both keep a mid-level financial-services regulatory associate billed. A chief legal officer who needs that file on payroll is not hiring an NQ against £145,000. They are hiring 2 to 6 PQE against a desk the firm will not put a UK band on.
Washington adds counsel-and-partner intensity more than London first-years. The ADVANCE Act was signed 9 July 2024; the NRC reported to Congress on fusion on 10 July 2025; the Federal Register proposed a fusion-machines framework on 26 February 2026. The FY2025 release cites Helion and fusion licensing as demand. International trade and investment absorbed two of the 1 January 2026 partner promotions, names unused. Those seats are real. They are not the NQ table.
The 1 May step held London NQs. It did not restaff a CLO desk.
We have run this hire in London for more than 10 years. The slow files are the ones that pretend the NQ is a mid-market band.
Over the last three years we closed 33 London associate searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks. Counter-offer incidence on that line is 35 percent. Median offer-to-acceptance is 12 working days.
Of those 33 closed London associate searches over three years, 19 were company-side seats and 14 were firm-side. Of the 19 company-side files, 7 were NQ-to-3 PQE seats priced against a published City NQ. Five of those 7 ran past the 6-to-12-week band, at a median of 15 weeks, because the buyer opened on an in-house band that could not cash-match the published NQ. That is the number that cuts against us: the published London associate timeline does not hold when a company tries to match Hogan cash with a mid-market in-house scale, and we now brief that rather than the headline band.
A head of legal at a commercial bank’s London office described the 12-day window as the constraint, not the base. Their compensation committee cannot clear a Hogan-matching number in 12 working days. By the time the band has been rewritten, the solicitor has already accepted a counter-offer on the lockstep. Sartori’s London associate counter-offer incidence is 35 percent. City NQ cash is one of the files that produces it.
Our own mapping of London lawyers records admission, employer and practice. It does not record unpublished PQE bands, because the firm does not publish them. That is the largest blind spot on a Hogan-adjacent in-house brief: we can price a London NQ against £145,000, and we can price a U.S. mid-level against the one printed posting, and we cannot price a 4-PQE Hogan London associate against an in-house band from a public ladder. Anyone who hands you that ladder from a job board is guessing. We will not. The global file behind that London map is the same research program: nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles, with quarterly surveys running since 2019.
We have worked the London associate market for more than 10 years, for in-house teams at banks, insurers, payments groups and regulated corporates, and for the firms those companies hire from. The composites below sit inside that envelope. They are anonymized: category of employer, desk, seniority band, timeline, outcome. No lawyer, firm or company names.
Qualification gates sit behind every one of those files. The Solicitors Regulation Authority, on a page updated 28 January 2026, requires a degree or equivalent, SQE1 then SQE2, two years’ qualifying work experience, and character and suitability. The employer asks for a 2:1 and at least AAB at A-level or equivalent, funds PGDL and SQE, and pays a London PGDL maintenance grant of £12,500 and an SQE maintenance grant of £20,000. U.S. lawyer candidates must hold a J.D. from an ABA-accredited school and be a member of the Bar, with office-level overlays — Virginia Bar on the Northern Virginia posting. A company that skips those gates on the brief is not running a Hogan-adjacent search. It is writing a different role.
The service view of a company-side seat sits on our London in-house counsel recruiting page. The associate line that produces the people a general counsel is bidding for sits with associate and attorney recruiting. Companies building a legal function rather than adding a seat should start with the first general counsel guide before they try to cash-match a City NQ.
A general counsel who cannot cash-match buys the work.
PEP is not partner pay. The NQ is not the firm.
A partner page that treated $3.522 million as a paycheck would be as wrong as an NQ page that invented a PQE ladder. Both mistakes are available. This page makes neither.
| Item | Status | What the 2026 record actually is |
|---|---|---|
| London NQ base | Public | £145,000 from 1 May 2026, firm-confirmed |
| London and Birmingham trainee bases | Public | Printed on the employer early-careers pages |
| Birmingham NQ base | Public | £87,500 in the same 2026 review |
| U.S. year-end and special bonus grid, 2025 cycle | Public | Above the Law recorded the Hogan Lovells match on 20 November 2025 |
| One U.S. mid-level posting band | Public | Northern Virginia life-sciences transactions, $260,000 to $390,000, August 2026 |
| FY2025 profits per equity partner | Public | $3.522 million on the 4 March 2026 release — an average, not a draw |
| UK post-NQ associate (PQE) bands | Not public | The firm said it does not share other associate salary bands |
| UK bonus cash | Not public | Described as a total-compensation approach; no pounds published |
| 2026 Hogan Lovells U.S. class-year base table | Not public | Absent from the Above the Law 2026 matcher table |
| Individual partner draws | Not public | PEP is a ratio, not a paycheck |
Standalone Hogan Lovells reported FY2025 gross revenue of $3.285 billion against FY2024 $2.965 billion on 4 March 2026, with PEP $3.522 million against $3.072 million and revenue per lawyer $1.210 million against $1.097 million. Sterling figures in the same release: £2.49 billion revenue, PEP £2.674 million, RPL £919,000. Regional mix: Americas 50 percent (about $1.6 billion; U.S. billings up nearly 12 percent); EMEA 46 percent; Asia-Pacific 4 percent. Dividing published FY2025 revenue by published RPL yields 2,715 lawyers; the release does not publish a matching headcount, and 2,715 is an arithmetic implication of two firm figures, not a census. Combined-firm headcount is the later, separate band of more than 3,200.
Bloomberg Law on 6 March 2025 recorded FY2024 equity partners at 325, down from 361, and non-equity partners at 487, up from 418. FY2025 PEP sits on that smaller equity tier. The 6 January 2026 promotions release put 28 lawyers to partner and 53 to counsel, effective 1 January 2026: Corporate and Finance 12, Global Regulatory and IP 10, Litigation 6. Global Legal Post the same day: Europe 15 (London 5) against 12 a year earlier; Americas 12; female share of the partner class 46 percent against 50 percent a year earlier; counsel 53 against 47. The FY2025 release also records 49 lateral partners in 2025. Counsel promotions absorb lawyers who will not make equity. Associate-to-partner odds are a function of that two-tier design, not of NQ cash.
Legal Business, on 6 March 2025, put UK revenues at $577 million, just under 20 percent of the FY2024 total. A London general counsel who treats this firm as a UK shop is reading the wrong mix. Americas is half the revenue. The FY2024 release put U.S. revenue per lawyer in excess of $1.5 million. The NQ the company is matching in London is a UK lockstep sitting on a transatlantic platform.
The FY2025 results release states the firm is investing approximately 5 percent of its revenue in technological innovation and digitalization, including its legal-technology company, ELTEMATE. That is a stated intensity band, not a dollar total, and it is not a new lockstep. It is the knowledge-lawyer and legal-operations overlay a general counsel also meets: London and Birmingham careers pages hire Knowledge Lawyers and paralegals alongside associates. Those seats are not on the NQ table. They are the people who sit under the same client matters at a different cost point.
$3.522 million is a ratio. £145,000 is a paycheck. Do not swap them.
Hours complete the picture the salary line hides. Legal Cheek’s firm profile, drawing on the Trainee and Junior Lawyer Survey 2026-27 of over 2,000 trainees and junior associates, lists average start 09:16, average finish 19:18, annual target hours “No targets” for this firm, and 25 days’ annual leave. U.S. bonus eligibility on the 2025 tracker was 2,000 hours. A company that hires a Hogan London NQ onto an in-house seat is not hiring a 2,000-hour machine. A company that hires a Cadwalader London first-year onto the same seat may be. Name the track before you name the hours.
Hogan Lovells salary 2026: questions from both sides of the figure
What is the Hogan Lovells nq salary in 2026?
London newly qualified base is £145,000 from 1 May 2026, confirmed by the firm. Legal Cheek published the announcement on 23 June 2026, a 3.5 percent step from the 2025 London NQ of £140,000. Birmingham NQ moved to £87,500 in the same review. Trainee bands were frozen. Post-NQ UK associate bands were not published, and this page does not invent them.
Did Hogan Lovells match the $235,000 U.S. first-year scale in 2026?
No published Hogan Lovells memo or Above the Law matcher row confirms a 2026 U.S. first-year of $235,000. Milbank set that market grid on 2 June 2026, effective 1 July 2026. Law.com International wrote on 11 June 2026 that both legacy U.S. platforms set salaries according to the Cravath scale — qualitative alignment, not a firm class-year table. The numbered U.S. figure this page will print is the 2025 bonus match and one August 2026 Northern Virginia posting.
What do Hogan Lovells partners make in 2026?
Standalone Hogan Lovells reported FY2025 profits per equity partner of $3.522 million on 4 March 2026, up from $3.072 million. That is firm profit divided by equity owners, not a partner’s draw. FY2024 equity partners numbered 325 against 487 non-equity, per Bloomberg Law on 6 March 2025. Individual draws are not public.
How does the Cadwalader combination change London associate pay?
From 1 July 2026 London runs two tracks: Hogan lockstep and Cadwalader New York-aligned pay, about 15 percent apart. Law.com International reported that U.S. associates would see pay parity while Cadwalader London associates would earn around 15 percent more than Hogan Lovells colleagues. Legal Cheek and RollOnFriday put Cadwalader London first-year cash at roughly £170,000, converted from a $225,000 U.S. first-year.
Can a general counsel cash-match a Hogan Lovells NQ in-house?
Most corporate legal-officer bands and the Government Legal Profession’s around £50,000 Legal Officer grade, as listed on the live 2026 GOV.UK recruitment page, cannot cash-match £145,000. A head of legal who cannot clear that number on payroll buys the work on a panel, or hires a specialist mid-level against a scoped seat rather than against the published NQ. Sartori’s London associate desk closed 33 searches over three years at a 93 percent completion rate; the files that tried to match City NQ cash with a mid-market in-house band were the slow ones.
What are Hogan Lovells trainee salaries in London in 2026?
London trainees remain at £56,000 in year one and £61,000 in year two; the 2026 review froze trainee bands. RollOnFriday reported the freeze on 26 June 2026. Birmingham trainees stay at £37,500 and £41,000. The employer FAQ lists up to 45 trainee solicitors a year, with London intakes of 20 in spring and 20 in autumn.
Firm announcements, Legal Cheek, and the 2025 bonus tracker.
UK NQ and trainee cash come from the employer and from Legal Cheek and RollOnFriday. U.S. bonus figures come from the Above the Law tracker. Partner PEP and combination scale come from the firm's own releases. Sartori figures are the London associate research program.
Sources
30 references- Sartori & Partners — London Legal Talent Research Programme (750 structured interviews; ~30,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells bumps NQ lawyer pay to £145k in run-up to Cadwalader merger legalcheek.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells pumps NQ pay to £145,000 rollonfriday.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells Cadwalader — London Training Contract ukearlycareers.hlc.com ↗
- Launch Your Legal Career with Hogan Lovells Cadwalader UK ukearlycareers.hlc.com ↗
- FAQ | Hogan Lovells Cadwalader UK early careers ukearlycareers.hlc.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells pushes NQ lawyer pay to £140k legalcheek.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells Cadwalader — Legal Cheek firm profile legalcheek.com ↗
- Slaughter and May raises newly qualified lawyer pay to £150,000 legalcheek.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells reports record results for the third consecutive year hlc.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells, Cadwalader disclose 2025 revenues ahead of law firms' merger reuters.com ↗
- Hogan Lovells Tops $3 Million in Partner Profits as Tier Shrinks news.bloomberglaw.com ↗
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UK trainee and NQ bases are employer-published or firm-confirmed through the legal press in 2025 and 2026. U.S. year-end and special bonuses are the 2025 cycle recorded on 20 November 2025. The $235,000 U.S. first-year is the Milbank market grid effective 1 July 2026, not a Hogan Lovells confirmation. The Northern Virginia band is a single August 2026 posting. FY2025 PEP, revenue and mix are standalone Hogan Lovells. Combined-lawyer counts are launch-era bands (more than 3,200), not a census. 2,715 is revenue divided by RPL, labeled as such. GLP bands are the live GOV.UK recruitment page, undated on the page itself.
Our own numbers — the London interview cohort, the 33 closed associate searches, the 35 percent counter-offer incidence and the 12-day offer-to-acceptance window — come from the continuous research program described on our research page. Compensation data is general information, not financial, career or legal advice. Actual pay varies by office, track, hours and bonus eligibility.
Keep reading
The market lockstep, the in-house benchmark, and the London search this figure sits inside.
BigLaw associate salary scale 2026
The Milbank/market lockstep this page refuses to treat as Hogan Lovells' unpublished U.S. table — $235,000 to $455,000 by class year.
Read the market scaleGeneral counsel and CLO salary 2026
What a company actually pays the person who has to match or buy around a City NQ — by company size and stage.
Read the GC benchmarkIn-house counsel recruiting in London
How we staff a London legal seat when the published NQ is the number a general counsel is bidding against.
London in-house searchA quiet conversation
Matching a Hogan Lovells NQ on the payroll — or buying the work instead?
We map London associate and in-house seats against the figures the firm will actually print, and we are as willing to tell you a requisition is a panel instruction as to open a search. Confidential, no obligation.