UK partner pay 2026: Magic Circle versus US PEP

Across Sartori’s London interview cohort (750 structured interviews), 214 equity partners at Magic Circle, UK independent, or US-headquartered London offices over a 24-month window said they price a move by converting the destination unit into the other currency before they talk about cash. They do not read a PAYE salary line. A managing partner at a national UK firm told us they lose laterals when the candidate puts a £1.1m PEP next to a $11m Am Law unit without converting.

The arithmetic is public. Linklaters £2.48m × 1.3582 = $3.368m. Kirkland $11.121m ÷ 1.3582 = £8.188m. The multiple is 11.121 / 3.368, about 3.3 times. Latham $8.654m is £6.372m on the same spot. White & Case $4.4m is £3.240m. Macfarlanes £3.1m is $4.210m — above White & Case in dollars, still well below Latham. A&O Shearman’s own USD PEP remains $2.9m.

Above the Law, on 15 April 2026, also printed Wachtell PEP at $12.152m, Davis Polk at $9.800m, Gibson Dunn at $8.890m, Paul Weiss at $8.631m and Simpson Thacher at $8.569m. Am Law 100 PEP rose 14 percent in 2025; 70 firms grew PEP at least 10 percent; only two reported PEP declines. Those are global units. TheCityUK, in its 9 December 2025 report, wrote that all of the world’s top 50 law firms have London offices, employing more than 8,500 lawyers. That stock is not a partner headcount, and it is not converted into one here.

The rest of the UK still earns a partner figure. The Law Society Leadership and Management Section Financial Benchmarking Survey 2025, written by Hazlewoods and published 5 March 2025, recorded median net profit per equity partner of £248,985 in 2024, from £206,230 in 2023, across 145 England and Wales firms with combined fee income over £1.1bn. Median super-profit after notional salary and notional interest on partner capital was £122,019. Median fee income per equity partner was £1,104,023. Median equity partner capital was £350,672. Fee-earner-to-equity-partner gearing was 6.8 to 1. At 1.3582, that 2024 median is $338,171. It is not a City PEP, and it is not a 2025 figure.

The 2026 survey press release, 29 April 2026, covers 121 firms and prints median practice fee income up 11.2 percent in 2025, with 85 percent of firms reporting year-on-year fee growth. It does not print a 2025 median PEP. This page does not carry 2024’s £248,985 forward into 2025. Pinsent Masons is the FY26 national print that moved the other way: Legal Business, 19 August 2026, put PEP down a little over 7 percent to £740,000 on revenue of £703m after an investment year. The Gazette table of 20 August 2026 printed £747,000; this page uses the later Legal Business narrative of £740,000.

Of 22 closed London partner searches over three years, 13 were equity laterals into private equity, funds, or energy and infrastructure seats at Magic Circle or US-headquartered London offices; 6 were national or UK-origin international seats; 3 were regional or specialist files. London partner mandate telemetry records a 43 percent counter-offer incidence on that line. The 13 high-PEP files are where a US dollar unit and a sterling lockstep PEP sit in the same conversation. They are also where we place slowly.

Of those 22 closed searches, 7 required a second pricing conversation because the candidate treated PEP as take-home cash. Four of those seven still closed inside the typical 4-to-7-month timeline; three used the full seven months. We place slowly when the unit has to be re-explained after the first offer. That is the finding that does not flatter the method: the conversion the public table makes obvious is still the step a live process misses.

Sartori & Partners runs a continuous research program over nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles mapped globally, with quarterly market surveys running since 2019. SRA admissions in the 12 months to July 2026 ran to 9,944, of which SQE accounted for 40 percent (4,019) and the LPC route 54 percent (5,391). By end December 2025 the SRA Board SQE report counted 5,374 admissions who were already qualified lawyers. That already-qualified path is how a US or other foreign partner takes an England and Wales title. A foreign lawyer who wants to be a manager of an authorized firm other than a licensed body must register as an RFL; the July 2026 census put that register at 7,674. Approval should be granted before the person takes up the role. Those clocks sit inside the 4-to-7-month search, not after it.

Three composites, numbers inside the London partner book, clients described by category only.

• A US London private-equity seat. A US-headquartered London office asked for an equity partner with sponsor-side M&A. The origin was a Magic Circle sterling PEP. The first offer quoted the global dollar unit as if it were a raise against unconverted sterling. The candidate’s counsel treated PEP as cash. We reopened the comparable, converted at the live spot, and closed in month six after a counter-offer from the origin firm. Book verification, not the headline unit, was the longer gate.
• A national funds replacement. A UK-origin international firm with PEP in the £1.1m band lost a funds partner to a US London office. The replacement search closed. The destination could not match the dollar unit; it could match the work. Time-to-fill sat at the long end of 4 to 7 months because two of the three shortlisted books failed conflicts at the first panel of clients.
• A company-side legal-director hire. A general counsel at a PE-backed UK industrial wanted a City partner onto the payroll as legal director. The company does not pay PEP. The conversation that closed was a PAYE package against the in-house desk, plus a clear brief that instructing rights on the panel would move with the person. Treating the origin PEP as the reservation wage would have priced the seat off the market.

If you earn the figure, the work is to name the pool, convert it, and ask what year one actually prints. If you are the general counsel or the firm leadership paying it, the same sentence runs in reverse: name the comparable, then decide whether you are splitting a residual or writing an invoice. We run that conversation as a confidential partner search and, where the move is onto a company payroll, as in-house counsel recruiting. The company conversation starts on the hire side of the site.