Salary · London independent
Macfarlanes Salary 2026: Associate Scale, Bonus and Partner Pay
From 1 July 2026 the London NQ base is £150,000. That is City lockstep cash printed in line with Magic Circle, at a three-office independent whose New York office does not practice US law. This page is for the lawyer who earns that figure and the general counsel who has to match it.
City lockstep money. Not a Magic Circle cell everywhere.
From 1 July 2026, London newly qualified cash at this independent is £150,000. Macfarlanes nq salary is City lockstep money, not a Magic Circle cell in New York or on a US associate scale. Sartori maps 30,000 lawyers in London. The question is who earns that print and which general counsel is matching it.
Legal Business reported on 2 July 2026 that this independent was the first major UK firm to increase salaries in 2026, from the £140,000 rate it had set in 2024. A dated print. Not a rumor.
The NQ print is public. The PQE ladder is not. The New York office is not a US payroll. The cash that is public is set out next.
- £150,000
- London NQ base from 1 July 2026, before bonusFirm training page; Legal Cheek 3 July 2026
- Legal Cheek; macfarlanes.com Training Programme page
- £3.1m
- Average PEP for FY26, second year at this levelUnaudited; year to 1 April 2026
- Law Gazette, 29 July 2026
- 33
- Training contracts on the early-careers FAQsNQ places prioritized for that intake
- macfarlanes.com Early Careers FAQs
- 96%
- Employees who received a bonus, 5 April 2025 snapshotIncidence, not a percentage of salary
- 2025 Pay gap report
The 2026 Macfarlanes nq salary is a London print, not a PQE table.
Three rungs are public: trainee year one, trainee year two, and newly qualified. Everything between qualification and the partnership is a closed book.
The number a newly qualified solicitor actually takes home as base, from 1 July 2026, is £150,000. Legal Cheek reported that print on 3 July 2026 as a £10,000 rise of 7 percent from the £140,000 rate; Legal Business the day before called the firm the first major UK outfit to increase salaries in 2026; The Lawyer the same week described a base of £150,000 plus bonuses. The firm’s own Training Programme page, accessed 11 September 2026, prints the same qualification salary. That is the Macfarlanes solicitor salary a general counsel can defend to a board without inventing a rung.
Trainee cash moves on a different clock. The same Legal Cheek piece, and The Lawyer on 2 July 2026, put first-year trainees at £60,000 and second-year at £65,000 from September 2026, up from £56,000 and £61,000. Those pounds are the training-contract base, London; the firm does not publish a regional NQ table. SQE and PGDL grants sit beside that cash, not inside it: the training page funds a BPP SQE course plus a £20,000 grant, and a non-law PGDL plus a £17,000 grant. Legal Cheek’s firm card, accessed 11 September 2026, records an outside-London PGDL grant of £8,875.50. Grants are maintenance during study, not NQ base.
The 2026 move is a second step, not a first print. Legal Cheek on 27 June 2024 recorded NQ going from £115,000 to £140,000, stated as a 22 percent rise. Legal Cheek’s Money talks table of 29 September 2025 still listed this firm at £140,000, grouped with the Silver Circle after Ashurst’s jump to that print, against a list average of £118,756 across 100-plus Firms Most List outfits and Magic Circle already at £150,000. Eighteen US London offices on that table paid NQs more than £170,000. The July 2026 raise closed the Magic Circle gap. It did not close the US-London gap.
| Rung | Cash | Effective | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| NQ base | £150,000 | 1 July 2026 | Public — London base before bonus |
| Trainee, year one | £60,000 | September 2026 | Public — training-contract base |
| Trainee, year two | £65,000 | September 2026 | Public — training-contract base |
| 1PQE–senior associate | Not published | — | No public lockstep |
| NQ / associate bonus % | Not published | — | Bonus exists; pounds are not printed |
| Bonus receipt (employees) | 96% | 5 April 2025 snapshot | Statutory incidence, not a % of salary |
NQ and trainee pounds: firm training page and Legal Cheek, 3 July 2026. Bonus receipt: 2025 Pay gap report, snapshot 5 April 2025. PQE and bonus percentages: unpublished; RollOnFriday, 3 July 2026.
City lockstep money is not a Magic Circle cell everywhere.
A general counsel does not pay PEP. A company pays National Insurance.
The partnership number funds the scale. The in-house hire copies the NQ print onto a company payroll, or buys the firm instead.
Across 750 structured interviews with London associates and in-house counsel, 186 of 210 general counsel and heads of legal at private-capital and listed London employers, over a 24-month window, said they price a first-year City hire off the published NQ print rather than off profit per equity partner. PEP is a partnership average. It is not the number a chief legal officer puts in a requisition.
Matching the print on a company payroll is a statutory arithmetic, not a firm on-cost. From 6 April 2025, secondary Class 1 National Insurance Contributions are 15 percent above a £5,000 annual Secondary Threshold, under the GOV.UK policy paper of 13 November 2024 and the HMRC rates page for 2025 to 2026. On a £150,000 NQ base that is £21,750 of employer NI. The cash payroll floor before pension, bonus, benefits or apprenticeship levy is £171,750. The apprenticeship levy at 0.5 percent of pay bill for employers over £3 million adds £750 per NQ head if the threshold applies. Employment Allowance is a firm-level offset, not a per-head deduction at this scale. A head of legal who budgets the headline and forgets the NI line has mispriced the hire by more than a month of that salary.
A chief legal officer at a UK-listed corporate told Sartori, in that same 24-month window: “The National Insurance line is the budget. The headline is not.” That is the company-side read. The person who earns the figure sees £150,000. The person who pays it sees £171,750 before the rest of the package, and then decides whether the work belongs on the payroll at all.
Government legal departments are not on this print. The GOV.UK legal trainee scheme page, last updated 14 April 2026, puts a Government Legal Department trainee at £34,695 in year one and £39,645 in year two. A public-sector general counsel does not “match” Macfarlanes. The matching reader is a private-capital, financial-services, corporate or family-office GC. The Office for National Statistics, in the 2025 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings released 23 October 2025, put median gross annual earnings for full-time employees in post at least a year at £39,039 in April 2025. The NQ print is a City talent price, not a UK earnings statistic.
GLD trainee, year one
Government Legal Department trainee cash, not a matcher of this table.
GOV.UK legal trainee scheme, updated 14 April 2026 ↗The person who earns the 2026 print sits on a London LLP payroll after four seats and SRA admission.
- The NQ factory is internal. Early-careers FAQs, accessed 11 September 2026, give priority for NQ places to the Macfarlanes Training Programme. Independent SQE candidates apply only where places remain and there is a business need.
- Live laterals name the desks. When accessed on 11 September 2026 the careers pages advertised Fund Formation and Sponsor Solutions at 2–6 PQE, Financial Services Regulatory at 2–6 PQE, and Construction and Engineering disputes at 5–7 PQE. Those ads are hiring signals, not salaries.
- Funds is a numbered bench. The Fund Formation vacancy lists eight partners, one senior counsel, four senior associates, 14 associates, five trainees, 15 paralegals and one senior knowledge lawyer. The FS regulatory vacancy lists three partners, a head of ESG, one senior knowledge lawyer, one senior counsel, seven senior associates and six associates.
The general counsel who pays the print is usually buying the desk, not running a training contract.
- Outsourced general counsel is a product. The Sponsor Solutions page, accessed 11 September 2026, states that many clients use the firm as an outsourced general counsel function. That is the company buying the seat instead of putting it on payroll.
- You rarely sample a trainee. Legal Cheek’s Trainee and Junior Lawyer Survey 2026–27 put chances of client secondment at 8 percent and secondment abroad at 0 percent. The firm typically waits until associate level before sending lawyers to clients.
- Buyer types are named on the practice pages. Private capital sponsors, sovereign wealth and pension LPs, family offices, listed corporates, clearing banks, credit funds, and developers and PFI project companies on the construction disputes ad.
The number a 3PQE costs is not on any page the firm will show you.
Bonus pounds, lockstep points and the mid-level band a company actually wants to match are unpublished. PEP is public, and it is not a salary.
Of 11 company-side associate briefs in London over the 18 months to September 2026 in which the client asked Sartori to reverse-engineer a Macfarlanes 3PQE or managing-associate band from the NQ print, 8 stalled because neither the firm nor the candidate would disclose a number. Those 11 briefs sit inside the 33 closed London associate searches over three years; they are the subset where the unpublished middle of the scale was the brief. A page that only ever shows searches closing would be a brochure. This is the part of the file that does not flatter the method: we cannot see what the firm does not print.
A general counsel at a London mid-market private-equity house put it without decoration, in the same 24-month interview window: “I can put £150,000 on a first-year. I will not invent a 3PQE band the firm will not print.” That is the honest in-house posture. The associate who wants to move into that seat has the same problem from the other side of the table: the NQ print is a floor they have already left, and the next public number is average equity PEP.
PEP for the year to 1 April 2026 is £3.1 million for the second year running, the Law Gazette reported on 29 July 2026, on turnover of £389.5 million (up 4.9 percent) and operating profit of £212.0 million (up 2.7 percent). Legal Cheek the next day called it a transitional year. Companies House records for MACFARLANES LLP (OC334406) show last accounts made up to 31 March 2025, with the next accounts to 31 March 2026 due by 31 December 2026, so the FY26 pounds are unaudited press figures, not a filed extract. PEP is average profit per equity partner. It is not drawings for every partner, and it is not a Macfarlanes associate salary.
The Law Gazette Top-50 table, updated 20 August 2026, is the clean perimeter. A&O Shearman: £2.8 billion revenue, PEP £2.2 million. Clifford Chance: £2.6 billion, PEP £2.3 million. Linklaters: £2.47 billion, PEP £2.48 million. This independent: £389.5 million revenue, PEP £3.1 million. More PEP than those Magic Circle rows, on a fraction of their revenue. That is why the NQ print can match Magic Circle while the firm is not a Magic Circle cell in New York, Hong Kong or on a US scale. For the wider London partnership picture see partner pay at London law firms; this page owns this firm’s 2026 scale, not the market-wide table.
Two derived ratios follow from those already-rounded headlines. Operating profit over revenue is £212.0 million / £389.5 million, or about 54.4 percent. Revenue per partner, using the 99 partners recorded on the 5 April 2025 pay-gap snapshot, is about £3.93 million. The NQ base is 4.8 percent of that PEP figure. None of those ratios is a pay band. Chambers UK 2026 lists 98 partners, 3 offices, 27 ranked departments and 54 ranked individuals. The statutory snapshot said 99 partners on 5 April 2025 and 96 on 5 April 2024. In 2025 the pay-gap report recorded nine lawyers promoted to the partnership; Nonbillable on 16 March 2026 recorded four promotions effective 1 April 2026 across disputes, private client, finance and employment. Promotions are demand at the top of the scale. They are not a published lockstep.
| Year | Revenue | Operating profit | PEP | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY24 (11-month, to 31 Mar 2024) | £309.1m | £174m | £2.6m | Legal Business, 24 July 2024 |
| FY25 (to 31 Mar 2025) | £371.4m | £206.5m | £3.1m | Law Gazette, 22 July 2025 |
| FY26 (to 1 Apr 2026, unaudited) | £389.5m | £212.0m | £3.1m | Law Gazette, 29 July 2026 |
Legal Business on 22 July 2025 put annualized FY24 revenue at £337.2 million against the 11-month £309.1 million. Employee headcount at MACFARLANES SERVICES LIMITED sat in the 500-to-999 band on the 5 April 2025 gender-pay filing. No primary page in the research states a global lawyer headcount.
I can put £150,000 on a first-year. I will not invent a 3PQE band the firm will not print.
The cash is priced off English-law work in four named pillars.
Private Capital, Private Wealth, M&A and Disputes. Brussels is EU competition. New York is not a US associate seat.
City lockstep cashNot a global Magic Circle cell
- London English-law lockstep Trainee, NQ and the unpublished rungs above it sit on a UK LLP payroll doing English-law work from the City campus.
- Magic Circle NQ print, matched The same London newly qualified number the Magic Circle last set in 2024. Same cash. Different firm.
- Independence, not a US scale A three-office independent. Brussels for EU competition and FDI. New York as a representative office that does not practice law.
Legal Cheek on 30 July 2026 quoted the incoming senior partner on a sharpened focus around four pillars — Private Capital, Private Wealth, M&A and Disputes — plus a New York representative office to support those pillars and independence. The Law Gazette the day before tied the FY26 result to standout mandates in M&A and disputes and continued strength in the advisory practices. Fee split by pillar is not published. The labels are what a general counsel is buying.
Deal values on which the firm acted, not its fee, size those desks. Legal Cheek on 30 July 2026 named Banco Sabadell on the proposed £2.65 billion sale of TSB to Santander, Evelyn Partners on its £2.7 billion sale to NatWest, and 17Capital on the $5.5 billion final closing of Strategic Lending Fund 6. Those are announced transaction values. They are not Macfarlanes associate pay. They tell a head of legal which kind of private-capital, M&A and funds work the NQ print is sitting on.
The public-M&A market that prices the corporate seat is not a boom. The LexisNexis Market Standards Trend Report on UK public M&A 2025, accessed 11 September 2026, counted 56 Takeover Code firm offers in calendar 2025 against 55 in 2024. Paul, Weiss, on 8 July 2026, put around 68 percent of H1 2026 firm offers with international bidders, and every firm offer above £1 billion with an overseas bidder. ONS, released 1 September 2026, counted 353 completed UK majority-control deals in the second quarter against 407 in the first, with inward value of £25.4 billion against £9.7 billion in the second quarter of 2025. High-value inbound, lower count. That is a 2–6 PQE public-M&A product, not an NQ factory.
The Takeover Panel Code Committee, in Panel Statement 2025/18 dated 2 December 2025, put dual-class, IPO and buyback amendments into force on 4 February 2026. Reuters, on 19 January 2026, recorded the new prospectus framework that day: a prospectus only if issuing shares equal to 75 percent of existing capital, against 20 percent before, and just nine companies floated on the LSE main market in 2025. The UK Listing Rules rewrite has been live since 29 July 2024. The structural change has not produced an IPO boom. Take-privates and secondary issuance are the 2026 flow.
Two other clocks sit on the private-capital and private-wealth seats a general counsel actually uses. The National Security and Investment Act annual report for 2025–26, published 14 July 2026, recorded 1,324 notifications, 15 percent up on 2024–25; 4.4 percent of reviewed notified acquisitions were called in. Mandatory-notification drafting is a 30-working-day NQ product; call-in work sits higher. HMRC HS266, updated 18 May 2026, confirms the remittance basis ended on 6 April 2025 and the FIG regime is being claimed on the 2025–26 return. GOV.UK technical amendments, updated 3 March 2026, keep the Temporary Repatriation Facility open for three tax years from 2025–26 at 12 percent for the first two years and 15 percent in the final year, with estimates of 17,000 individuals eligible for FIG or Overseas Workday Relief and at least 23,000 former remittance-basis users who may use TRF. That is the private-client and tax desk the FY25 Gazette copy said outperformed around the election, still live in 2026–27.
Funds associates face a UK rewrite, not EU AIFMD II. FCA consultation CP26/28, first published 14 July 2026, covers UK asset managers overseeing almost £2 trillion in alternative assets, with implementation currently envisaged for 2028. That is advisory work for the Fund Formation and FS Regulatory desks already hiring at 2–6 PQE. It is not a 2026 NQ hiring spike. Brussels remains EU merger control, FDI, foreign subsidies and antitrust before the European Commission and EU courts, on the firm Brussels page accessed 11 September 2026. Legal Cheek’s 2026–27 junior survey put average start at 09:12 and average finish at 20:26, with no annual target hours and 26 days’ leave. Hours are utilization context. They are not a bonus formula.
Construction and engineering disputes is the other live lateral, at 5–7 PQE. The vacancy, accessed 11 September 2026, puts that disputes team at two partners, five senior associates and two associates, with a non-contentious construction group of one partner and seven associates, inside a litigation practice of 18 partners, three senior counsel, 25 senior associates, 26 associates, 12 trainees and three paralegals. Buyers on that ad are commercial developers, house builders, PFI project companies and investors, on hospitals, schools, data centers, studios and infrastructure. A general counsel at a developer or a PE-backed project company is buying that seat. A company that wants the lawyer on payroll is matching a 5–7 PQE conversation, not the NQ print.
Corporate investigations sit on the same disputes platform. The failure-to-prevent-fraud offence in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 came into force on 1 September 2025, GOV.UK announced that day: a large organization can be criminally liable where an employee, agent, subsidiary or other associated person commits fraud intending to benefit the organization, unless reasonable fraud-prevention procedures were in place. Guidance updated 10 October 2025 applies the offence to large incorporated bodies, subsidiaries and partnerships. That is a disputes and investigations product from September 2025, not an NQ hiring spike. A chief legal officer who needs a named person to own “reasonable procedures” is looking at an in-house investigations seat or at the firm’s disputes desk, not at a trainee.
The CMA’s 4Ps merger-process changes, proposed 13 February 2025 with updated guidance published 28 October 2025, targeted pre-notification inside 40 working days against a then-average of 65, and straightforward Phase 1 inside 25 working days against 35. London and Brussels competition associates do more front-loaded remedy drafting. That is NQ through 3 PQE work, not a headcount boom. It is also why a general counsel running a UK-plus-EU deal still buys both desks.
Legal Business, on 2 September 2024, described single-strategy mid-cap private-equity shops becoming multi-product platforms with credit and infrastructure alongside buyout, and said the role of the lawyers working with them had changed. The general counsel, head of legal or GC-for-investments seat inside a London private-capital house is therefore a buyer of this firm’s private-capital work and a later destination for the same people — not the factory that pays the 2026 NQ table.
Neighbors left the UK-independent list. Legal Business on 2 June 2025 recorded Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer going live on 1 June. PR Newswire on 28 June 2026 recorded Perkins Coie and Ashurst completing their combination. This firm remained a three-office independent and matched Magic Circle NQ cash on 1 July 2026 instead. That is the perimeter of this seat, not those neighbors’ locksteps.
Match the cash you can read. Do not staff a band the firm will not show you.
Sartori has worked the London associate market for more than ten years. The closed-search file is 33 mandates. The interview file is the same London cohort already cited.
Buy the firmPut the lawyer on payroll
- Panel and outsourced GC Keep the independent on the panel, or buy Sponsor Solutions as an outsourced general counsel function, when the work is episodic.
- Hire the NQ print When the company needs a first-year on the payroll, match the published London NQ base and budget employer NI on top.
- Stop at the blank rung A 3PQE or managing-associate match is a verified conversation with a named candidate, not a careers-page ladder.
Over the trailing three years Sartori closed 33 London associate searches, with a 93 percent completion rate and a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks. Median offer-to-acceptance on that file is 12 working days. Counter-offer incidence on the London associate line is 35 percent: of 20 offers issued on City-independent associate mandates in the same 36-month telemetry, 7 drew a written counter. Those 20 offers sit inside the 33 closed searches. Of the 33, 14 were NQ-to-3 PQE seats at UK independent City firms where the published NQ print, not a hidden PQE band, set the opening offer. That is the mandate shape that closes on a published NQ print.
The SRA population table for July 2026 records 178,428 practicing solicitors in England and Wales. The credential overlay in front of this NQ print is the SQE route — degree or equivalent, SQE1 and SQE2, two years’ qualifying work experience, character and suitability — with the LPC still open until 31 December 2032 for those in transition, on the SRA Q&A updated 28 January 2026. Screening via Atlantic Data is £34 (SRA, updated 17 July 2026); admission is £100. The firm overlay, on the early-careers FAQs, is usually a 2:1, first-attempt SQE1 and SQE2, and a BPP Holborn cohort. About half of trainees studied a non-law subject. Vacation schemes run around 55 places; the First Year Insight Scheme around 25. Overseas-qualified lawyers are directed to experienced-hire vacancies, not the training contract.
Autumn retention is how internal demand for the NQ seat is measured. Legal Cheek on 7 September 2026: 24 of 29, 83 percent, all permanent, NQ start salary £150,000. The Lawyer live tracker carried the same 24 of 29 on 4 September 2026. Practice destinations for those NQs were undisclosed in the 2025 Legal Cheek table. A general counsel cannot read which pillar the retained class went into. The firm had already moved from a split spring/autumn intake to a single annual intake by the 2025 round.
| Round | NQ offers | Retention | NQ base then | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2024 | 27 of 32 | 84% | £140,000 | Legal Cheek, 27 June 2024 |
| Autumn 2025 | 24 of 28 | 86% | £140,000 | Legal Cheek, 18 August 2025 |
| Autumn 2026 | 24 of 29 | 83% | £150,000 | Legal Cheek, 7 September 2026 |
Three seats a general counsel actually opens
A mid-market sponsor’s legal head asked for a 3PQE funds lawyer priced off this firm’s NQ print. The brief ran nine weeks inside the 6-to-12-week band and stalled when the candidate would not disclose a current band and the careers page still ended at qualification salary. The company kept the firm as panel and bought Sponsor Solutions as the outsourced general counsel function instead of putting a mid-level on payroll. That is one of the eight stalled reverse-engineering briefs.
A UK-listed corporate legal department needed a first-year on the payroll for public-M&A spillover after a Takeover Code bid. The opening offer was the published £150,000 NQ base plus the NI line. The offer was accepted in 12 working days. No counter followed. The search closed in eight weeks. Of 94 NQ and junior associates in the London interview cohort over an 18-month window, 61 said they would take a first in-house seat at the published NQ print if the work was public M&A or funds, and would not if the company asked them to name a 3PQE expectation the old firm had never printed.
A family-office counsel seat in London wanted private-wealth and tax fluency after the FIG regime went live. The company compared a lateral from a City independent against keeping the independent on private-wealth disputes and tax. It did not hire. The TRF window is still open; the work was treated as a 2026–27 advisory spike, not as a permanent headcount. Client secondment at 8 percent meant the company had never met a trainee from that bench anyway.
Sartori maps lawyers across London as a coverage file: admission, employer, practice label. That mapping does not invent a Macfarlanes PQE table. Quarterly surveys have run since 2019. The global research file holds nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles. The London associate desk is the one that closed those 33 searches. If the brief is a published NQ match, the search behaves. If the brief is a band the employer will not show, the honest first conversation is whether the company should be hiring at all.
A company that needs that conversation — NQ match, mid-level without a published ladder, or an outsourced general counsel product instead of a hire — can open it with the in-house and general counsel desk or the associate desk. The US class-year ladder this New York office is not on is the 2026 BigLaw associate scale. How in-house cash sits against private practice in general is the private-practice versus in-house guide.
Macfarlanes salary 2026: questions from both sides of the table
What is the 2026 Macfarlanes nq salary?
From 1 July 2026 the London newly qualified base is £150,000 before bonus. Legal Cheek reported that figure on 3 July 2026; the firm’s own Training Programme page, accessed 11 September 2026, prints the same qualification salary. It is a London NQ base, not a 1PQE-to-senior table and not a US associate scale. Bonuses sit on top of the base; the firm does not publish the bonus as a percentage of salary.
Does Macfarlanes publish a 1PQE, 3PQE or senior associate scale?
No. RollOnFriday wrote on 3 July 2026 that above NQ most firms prefer not to divulge bandings, and the firm’s public cards leave 1PQE, 2PQE and 3PQE cells blank. A general counsel matching a mid-level seat cannot take a public Macfarlanes lockstep. Treat any 3PQE pound figure you are quoted as a conversation, not as a published band.
What does a general counsel pay to match the NQ print on a company payroll?
Statutory employer Class 1 NI at 15% above a £5,000 threshold adds £21,750, so the payroll floor on the £150,000 base is £171,750 before pension, bonus, benefits or levy. GOV.UK set that NI rate from 6 April 2025. The apprenticeship levy, at 0.5% of pay bill for employers over £3 million, adds £750 per NQ head if the threshold applies. None of that is why the firm raised NQ; it is what a company pays if it copies the print.
Is this Magic Circle pay or US lockstep pay?
It matches the Magic Circle London NQ print of £150,000; it is not a US associate scale. Legal Cheek on 3 July 2026 put Quinn Emanuel’s London NQ at £189,000 and converted Milbank’s NQ as $235,000, roughly £176,000. Macfarlanes opened a New York representative office on 1 April 2026 that does not practice US law. PEP of £3.1 million on £389.5 million of FY26 revenue, as the Law Gazette reported on 29 July 2026, is a smaller independent, not a Magic Circle cell everywhere.
How many Macfarlanes trainees were kept as NQs in 2026?
24 of 29 qualifying trainees received permanent NQ offers in autumn 2026, an 83 percent retention rate, Legal Cheek reported on 7 September 2026. The prior two autumns were 24 of 28 (86 percent) in 2025 and 27 of 32 (84 percent) in 2024. The firm lists 33 training contracts on its early-careers FAQs and on Legal Cheek’s Firms Most List 2027 edition. NQ places are prioritized for the firm’s own trainees.
Should our company hire this lawyer in-house or keep buying the firm as panel?
Hire in-house when the seat needs a signature on your payroll; buy the firm when the work is episodic. The firm’s Sponsor Solutions page, accessed 11 September 2026, says many clients use it as an outsourced general counsel function. Legal Cheek’s 2026–27 junior survey put client-secondment probability at 8 percent and overseas secondment at 0 percent, so a trainee-level sample of the bench is rare. Government legal departments are not on this cash print: the GLD trainee year-one figure on GOV.UK, updated 14 April 2026, is £34,695.
Firm filings, Legal Cheek, the Gazette, HMRC and the Takeover Panel.
NQ and trainee pounds come from the employer careers page and dated legal press. Partnership pounds come from unaudited results as reported. Statutory NI, gender-pay and solicitor-population figures come from GOV.UK, HMRC, the SRA and ONS. Sartori figures come from the London associate research program.
FY26 revenue, operating profit and PEP are unaudited figures as reported by the Law Gazette on 29 July 2026. Companies House last accounts for the LLP are made up to 31 March 2025. Associate PQE bands, bonus as a percentage of salary, nonequity partner pay, pillar fee split and a point lawyer headcount are not in the public record used here.
Firm pages, legal press, Gazette tables and statutory instruments
61 references- Sartori & Partners — London Legal Talent Research Programme (750 structured interviews; ~30,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Macfarlanes matches Magic Circle with £150k NQ lawyer salary legalcheek.com ↗
- Macfarlanes bumps NQ pay to £150,000 legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
- Macfarlanes ups NQ pay to magic circle rates thelawyer.com ↗
- Macfarlanes raises NQ pay to £150,000 while DLA Piper plumps for £140,000 rollonfriday.com ↗
- Training Programme macfarlanes.com ↗
- Early Careers FAQs macfarlanes.com ↗
- Macfarlanes (Legal Cheek firm card) legalcheek.com ↗
- Macfarlanes enters City pay war, boosts NQ lawyer salaries over 20% to £140k legalcheek.com ↗
- Money talks: What newly qualified solicitors earn at the UK’s top law firms legalcheek.com ↗
- Mishcon and Macfarlanes reveal latest trainee retention scores legalcheek.com ↗
- Macfarlanes posts 86% trainee retention score legalcheek.com ↗
- The Firms Most List legalcheek.com ↗
- Profit growth flat as Macfarlanes announces £3.1m PEP lawgazette.co.uk ↗
- Macfarlanes revenue climbs, but partner profits stick at £3.1 million legalcheek.com ↗
- Top-50 financial results table 2026: updated live lawgazette.co.uk ↗
- PEP tops £3m at Macfarlanes as Charles Russell Speechlys announces profits rise lawgazette.co.uk ↗
- PEP breaks £3m at Macfarlanes as firm announces new senior partner legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
- PEP surges at Macfarlanes with 24% rebound to record high legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
- 2025 Pay gap report macfarlanes.com ↗
- Pay gap 2024 report macfarlanes.com ↗
- Gender pay gap reports for MACFARLANES SERVICES LIMITED gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk ↗
- Changes to the Class 1 National Insurance Contributions Secondary Threshold… from 6 April 2025 gov.uk ↗
- Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 gov.uk ↗
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- Employee earnings in the UK: 2025 ons.gov.uk ↗
- MACFARLANES LLP overview find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk ↗
- Population of solicitors in England and Wales sra.org.uk ↗
- New York macfarlanes.com ↗
- Macfarlanes to open New York base led by former managing partner legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
- Macfarlanes Debuts in New York with Private Capital-Focused Office law.com ↗
- Join us macfarlanes.com ↗
- Sponsor Solutions macfarlanes.com ↗
- Fund Formation and Sponsor Solutions Associate 2-6 PQE macfarlanes.com ↗
- Financial Services Regulatory Associate 2 to 6 years' PQE macfarlanes.com ↗
- Litigation and Dispute Resolution - Construction and Engineering 5 to 7 years' PQE macfarlanes.com ↗
- Macfarlanes LLP, UK 2026 chambers.com ↗
- Freshfields sets down Magic Circle salary marker as it ups NQ lawyer pay 20% to £150k legalcheek.com ↗
- ALERT: Milbank Does It Again — Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! abovethelaw.com ↗
- Panel Statement 2025/18 thetakeoverpanel.org.uk ↗
- Britain eases rules for companies to raise funds reuters.com ↗
- CP26/28: The UK AIFM Regime fca.org.uk ↗
- National Security and Investment Act 2021 Annual Report 2025-26 gov.uk ↗
- HS266 Foreign income and gains (FIG) regime (2026) gov.uk ↗
- Technical amendments to the residence-based tax regime gov.uk ↗
- Legal trainee scheme gov.uk ↗
- Market Standards Trend Report Trends in UK Public M&A deals in 2025 lexisnexis.co.uk ↗
- UK Public M&A: H1 2026 Update & H2 2026 Outlook paulweiss.com ↗
- Mergers and acquisitions involving UK companies: April to June 2026 ons.gov.uk ↗
- FCA overhauls listing rules to boost growth and innovation on UK stock markets fca.org.uk ↗
- HSF Kramer reveals full global leadership line-up as merger goes live legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
- Perkins Coie and Ashurst Finalize Combination, Creating Ashurst Perkins Coie - A Firm Built for What's Next prnewswire.com ↗
- Admission to the roll of solicitors and related fees sra.org.uk ↗
- Apply for screening sra.org.uk ↗
- Questions and answers (SQE) sra.org.uk ↗
- Macfarlanes promotes four in scaled-back partner round nonbillable.co.uk ↗
- New measures to tackle fraud come into effect gov.uk ↗
- Offence of 'failure to prevent fraud' introduced by ECCTA gov.uk ↗
- New CMA proposals to drive growth, investment and business confidence competitionandmarkets.blog.gov.uk ↗
- 4Ps updates to the CMA’s mergers guidance gov.uk ↗
- Elite: The rise of the in-house lawyer in private capital legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
NQ and trainee cash are employer and legal-press prints. PEP is an equity-partner average, not associate pay. Employer NI is statutory arithmetic on the published base.
The lockstep next door, and the payroll the company actually runs.
This page owns one firm’s 2026 London print. The US scale, London PEP and in-house cash sit on their own URLs.
BigLaw associate salary scale 2026
The US class-year ladder this New York office is not on — $235,000 to $455,000 from 1 July 2026.
Read the US lockstepPartner pay at London law firms
How London independents and Magic Circle platforms print PEP — the partnership number, not this NQ scale.
Read London partner payIn-house counsel salary 2026
What companies actually budget when the hire sits on the corporate payroll rather than on a City LLP.
Read in-house payA quiet conversation
Matching a City NQ print on a company payroll?
We map London associate and in-house legal talent, and we are as willing to tell you a 3PQE band is not public as to open a search. Confidential, no obligation.