Knowledge management lawyer and PSL salary in 2026

1. London law-firm PSL. Median accepted base £128,000 on 7 seats, inside 18 closed searches, from 1 January 2024 through 30 September 2026. Median post-qualification experience on those 7 was 9 years.
2. Scope inside the London group. 3 seats whose written brief included training lawyers on the firm’s deployed AI tools had a median accepted base of £141,000. 4 seats whose brief stopped at precedents had a median of £118,000. Same window. The two subset medians do not have to average back to the £128,000 overall median.
3. US law-firm knowledge-management counsel. Median accepted base $255,000 on 5 seats in the same 18, from 1 January 2024 through 30 September 2026. Median time since the J.D. was 8 years. 2 were paid inside the firm’s associate band for class years 4 to 6. 3 were on a separate counsel scale.
4. Company-side knowledge counsel. Median accepted base $205,000 on 3 US seats reporting to a general counsel. 1 UK company-side seat, not a median, accepted at £145,000. 2 UK law-firm PSL seats outside London, also not a median, accepted at £92,000 and £100,000.
5. Twelve-month retention, on the files old enough to read. 14 of the 18 had been filled by 30 September 2025, so a full year had elapsed by 30 September 2026. 12 of those 14 were still in seat on 30 September 2026. The other 4 were filled from October 2025 through September 2026 and sit in the placement count only.

Set the London median against the only City cash figure the market actually publishes. The Magic Circle London newly qualified base was £150,000 in the Global Legal Post report of 2 July 2026, when Macfarlanes moved from £140,000 to £150,000 effective 1 July 2026 and matched A&O Shearman, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters, and Slaughter and May, and in the Nonbillable report of 20 July 2026, when Baker McKenzie London moved from £145,000 to £150,000 effective 1 July 2026. The Law Society Gazette reported on 15 May 2025 that Hogan Lovells had raised its London newly qualified base from £135,000 to £140,000 from 1 May 2025, and that Slaughter and May was holding £150,000 in that spring review. The 7 London PSL files are not all Magic Circle firms. On those files the median accepted base of £128,000, at a median 9 years’ PQE, sat £22,000 under that £150,000 newly qualified rate.

That is not a claim that every professional support lawyer earns less than every newly qualified solicitor. It is the median of these 7 accepted bases, against one published newly qualified rate. The same median sat £43,039 above the ONS 80th percentile of £84,961. A London knowledge seat can be under a City newly qualified rate and still be far above the national solicitor distribution. Both sentences are true because they use different comparators.

The US law-firm median of $255,000 sat $5,000 above the NALP third-year median of $250,000 at firms of 701 or more lawyers, as of 1 January 2025, and $120,000 below the eighth-year median of $375,000 at those firms. It sat $20,000 above the Milbank first-year base of $235,000 reported for the June 2026 increase, and $200,000 below the Milbank eighth-year base of $455,000. Against the BLS May 2025 lawyer median it was $95,330 higher. The 5 files are not identified here as firms of 701 or more lawyers. Median experience was 8 years since the J.D., which is why an eighth-year associate scale is the wrong ceiling to import, and a third-year scale is only a nearby public bracket.

The US company-side median of $205,000 sat $45,330 above the same BLS median of $159,670. It is a counsel package reported to a general counsel. In-house counsel pay more broadly is a different distribution, covered in the in-house counsel salary guide for 2026. The associate cash scale those company offers are sometimes copied from is the BigLaw associate salary scale for 2026.

A newly qualified salary is the wrong anchor for a lawyer 9 years out. A London law firm of more than 500 lawyers hired a corporate professional support lawyer at an accepted base of £132,000. The offer was accepted in week 9. The written brief was the precedent set plus a quarterly training rota. It was not a full rollout of training on deployed AI tools, so the file sits in the precedents group of 4, whose median was £118,000. £132,000 is the high end of that group, not a contradiction of it, and it is one of the 7 London seats whose overall median was £128,000. Week 9 is inside the median of 10 weeks across the 18 filled searches.

The hiring partner at that firm described the earlier miss. We priced the PSL at the newly qualified rate. The lawyers who could run the precedent set were nine years out. The search moved when base cleared £130,000. Clearing £130,000 is just above the London median of £128,000. The accepted base was £132,000.

A knowledge counsel is paid as counsel, and the letter should say so. A New York law firm of more than 700 lawyers hired a restructuring knowledge-management counsel at an accepted base of $262,000. The offer was accepted in week 11. The file is one of the 5 US law-firm seats, above their median of $255,000, and it is one of the 3 on a counsel scale rather than inside the associate band. Week 11 is the slow side of the 10-week median. The Austin company-side letter, quoted above, landed on $205,000, the median of the three US company seats, and it said the seat was counsel.