Hong Kong partner pay in 2026 is not the PEP you were sent.

Clifford Chance’s 22 July 2026 results for the year ended 30 April 2026 state firm-wide PEP of £2.3 million, and the firm’s own US dollar equivalent of US$3.1 million. Linklaters, on 21 July 2026, stated profit per equity partner of £2.48 million and profit per all partners of £2.31 million. A&O Shearman, on 16 July 2026, stated PEP of US$2.9 million (GBP 2.2 million). The Law Gazette’s live Top-50 table of 20 August 2026 reprints those three figures. None of the four documents gives a Hong Kong-office PEP.

The Law Gazette went further on 7 August 2026: average PEP at Linklaters, Clifford Chance and A&O Shearman was about £1 million higher in 2025/26 than in 2015/16, and Freshfields and Slaughter and May do not publish PEP. The story is explicit that the figure is City-wide. A general counsel who pastes it into a Hong Kong offer paper is pasting a decade-change in London partnership profit into a salaries-tax payroll.

United States firm-wide PEP is a second discarded cell, not a second Hong Kong scale. Above the Law’s 15 April 2026 recap of the 2026 Am Law 100 (2025 performance) puts Wachtell at US$12.152 million, Kirkland & Ellis at US$11.121 million, Davis Polk at US$9.800 million, Quinn Emanuel at US$9.545 million, Gibson Dunn at US$8.890 million and Latham & Watkins at US$8.654 million, with Am Law 100 PEP up 14 percent in 2025. Kirkland gross revenue was US$10.556 billion; Latham US$8.300 billion. Those figures live on the US partner-pay page. They are not a Central lockstep.

Hong Kong Lawyer, in October 2021, described lockstep firms adding gateways, holds, downward moves, acceleration and a “super lockstep” under pressure from US guarantees. That is a qualitative account of remuneration mechanics, dated 2021, in the Law Society’s journal. It is not a 2026 Hong Kong pay table, and it does not convert a London PEP into a Hong Kong dollar draw.

Of 72 international-firm equity-capital-markets and mergers-and-acquisitions partners and counsel inside Sartori’s Hong Kong interview cohort, over a 24-month window, 58 said the first number a company general counsel quotes them is firm-wide PEP. That 72 is a segment of the same cohort, not a second census. A hiring partner at a Magic Circle Hong Kong ECM desk put it without decoration: the London results release is what lands in the inbox, and it is the wrong instrument for a Hong Kong offer.

The Law Society’s Profile of the Profession as of 31 August 2026 records 12,160 practising certificates, of which 8,402 (69 percent) sit in private practice. That private-practice stock is where a Hong Kong-law partnership is paid. LCQ13, the 15 July 2026 written answer by the Secretary for Justice, gives the private-practice series the Department of Justice actually holds: practising certificates 11,235 (December 2021), 11,457 (2022), 11,589 (2023), 11,758 (2024) and 11,977 (December 2025), of whom in private practice 7,940 / 7,930 / 7,966 / 8,019 / 8,181. The Bar Association, as at June 2026, has over 1,700 practising members, including 109 Senior Counsel. LCQ13 also states that the Law Society and the Bar Association do not publish a breakdown of corporate legal advisers. The matching general-counsel seat lives in the not-in-private-practice remainder plus unadmitted in-house lawyers the Society does not count. There is no 2026 census of Hong Kong general counsel, and this page does not invent one.

Most of the firms that pay a local partnership are not Magic Circle offices. The Law Society Standing Committee on Compliance report for the year ended 31 December 2024 counted 421 sole practitioners, 393 firms with 2 to 5 partners, 46 with 6 to 10, 48 with 11 to 20, and 15 with over 20, totaling 923 firms (2023: 926). The August 2026 snapshot has moved the firm count to 932. A salaried partner at a 2-to-5-partner independent firm is not paid on Clifford Chance’s firm-wide PEP, and a general counsel matching that person should not budget as if they were.

Sartori & Partners runs a continuous research program over nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles mapped globally, with quarterly market surveys since 2019. Over the trailing three years we closed 15 Hong Kong partner searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 4 to 7 months, with a median 18 working days from offer to signature and a 39 percent counter-offer incidence. Of those 15 files, 9 were international-firm ECM or M&A laterals, 4 were independent Hong Kong firm partnership seats, and 2 were partner-to-in-house moves into a general-counsel or head-of-legal chair. Three of the 15 had their first package withdrawn and recut after the buyer had built it on firm-wide PEP. Fourteen completed. One did not. That recut rate is the finding that does not flatter the method: we still let a wrong cell reach an offer letter, and we now brief the cash table before the longlist.

Of 54 independent Hong Kong firm partners inside the interview cohort, over a 24-month window, 31 described themselves as salaried or non-equity rather than as profit-sharing equity. A hiring partner at a 2-to-5-partner independent firm told us the 2012 court figure is closer to what they actually write into a salaried-partner letter than anything in a London results release. That is testimony about a local instrument, not a second pay survey.

Three anonymized composites from that book, described by category only.

International ECM into a listed-exchange GC chair. A Hong Kong-listed market-infrastructure operator asked us to match an international-firm equity-capital-markets partner, dual New York and Hong Kong admission, onto a group general-counsel seat. The first board paper arrived with Clifford Chance FY26 PEP as the comparable. We withdrew it. The recut package was built on Directorate (Legal) Principal Government Counsel cash plus a two-year retention overlay. Time-to-fill six months, inside the 4-to-7-month band. The firm issued a counter-offer. The candidate signed on day 16 of the 18-day median window. Completed.

Independent-firm salaried partner, local cash. A 2-to-5-partner independent Hong Kong firm needed a non-equity corporate partner with listing-related counsel. The letter was written as employment, monthly cash in the Senior Government Counsel neighborhood, plus a fee commission, echoing the 2012 court structure rather than a Magic Circle draw. Four months brief to signature. No counter-offer. Completed.

Bank general counsel, stalled on PEP, then recut. A licensed bank’s head of legal opened on A&O Shearman FY26 PEP as the number required to hire a funds and M&A partner in-house. The process sat still for eight weeks while compensation committee language could not be reconciled with a salaries-tax payroll. We recut to Law Officer cash plus a guaranteed bonus. The file closed in the seventh month. It is one of the three recuts in the 15, and the reason the cash table now opens the brief.

A chief legal officer reading this as a buyer should take three numbers into the compensation committee and leave the fourth outside. Take the Directorate (Legal) monthly points from 1 April 2026. Take the tax instrument: salaries tax on a BIR60, not profits tax on a BIR52. Take the credential: Hong Kong solicitor, or OLQE already passed, not a registered-foreign-lawyer card. Leave firm-wide PEP outside the paper. The partner reading this as the person who earns the figure should ask the same three questions of any in-house offer that claims to “match partnership”: which public cell, which tax form, which admission.

The service view of this book sits on our partner recruiting page. Companies hiring the matching in-house chair, rather than the partnership itself, should start with how to run a general counsel search. All-lawyer Hong Kong pay, including seats this page does not price, sits on lawyer salary in Hong Kong 2026. Legal recruiters Hong Kong conversations that arrive as a PEP screenshot are the ones we send back to this table.