AZB & Partners, Trilegal, Wadia Ghandy and legal process outsourcing (LPO) company Pangea3 have hiked their basic starting salary packages to as high as Rs 11.4 lakh per year, which makes AZB as the top-paying legal recruiter in Legally India's new law firm salary table.
AZB's Mumbai office has increased its base remuneration from Rs 10.68 lakh to Rs 11.4 lakh per annum ($24,350) for 2009-10 graduates joining the firm, excluding any additional bonus element, giving AZB joiners the best possible basic starting salary package of any Indian law firm.
AZB's Delhi office, which has a different salary structure from Mumbai, is understood to have also increased base fresher salaries to a competitive Rs 9.8 lakh per year.
Meanwhile, Trilegal has hiked its salaries to make the firm the third-highest paying Indian firm, according to Legally India research and associate survey data.
Trilegal has decided in its compensation review in April 2010 to ratchet up its annual salary to Rs 10.2 lakh from its previous figure of around Rs 9 lakh.
Trilegal's partnership has also decided to increase the package offered to 2011 joiners to Rs 10.8 lakh per year.
2010 Indian legal recruiters' basic starting salary, excl. performance-related pay | |
Firm | Base remuneration (Rs lakh) |
AZB & Partners (Mumbai) | 11.4 |
S&R Associates | 10.8 |
Trilegal | 10.2 (10.8 for 2011) |
AZB & Partners (Delhi) | 9.8 |
Amarchand Mangaldas | 9.6 |
J Sagar Associates (JSA) | 9.6 |
Luthra & Luthra | 9 (under review) |
ICICI Bank | 8.35 - 8.8 |
Wadia Ghandy | 8.4 |
Talwar Thakore | 8.4 |
Khaitan & Co | 7.2 - 8.5 |
Desai & Diwanji | 6 - 8.4 |
Nishith Desai Associates (NDA) | 7.2 (+4.8 retained until third year) |
SAIL | 6.6 - 6.8 |
Phoenix Legal | 6 - 7.2 |
IFMR | 6 - 6.5 [correction] |
Juriscorp | 4.8 - 6 |
Pangea3 | 4 - 6 (5 - 7 for 2010) (incl. bonus, TBC) |
Lakshmikumaran Sridharan | 4.8 |
Crawford Bayley | 4.8 |
Kochhar & Co | 4.2 - 4.8 |
Supreme Court judicial clerkships | 1.8 - 2.4 (under review) |
All basic Trilegal starting salary packages are eligible to a maximum Rs 2 lakh "performance retainer" bonus element.
Wadia Ghandy too is understood to have significantly increased its basic starting salary package for all joiners to Rs 8.4 lakh per year, up from a more flexible package of between Rs 6 to 8.4 lakh which varied depending on the joiner.
Wadia Ghandy's pay-hike, however, is understood to apply retroactively to all 2010 graduate joiners.
LPO Pangea3 has also decided to increase its salary package to Rs 5 to 7 lakh affecting all future 2010 recruitment, up from its currently offered figure of Rs 4 to 6 lakh. These figures apply only to direct recruitment of "top test performers" from the top 10 campuses and include a performance-related bonus element. [correction - the original article stated that Pangea3 figures were base packages. See comment #69 below for details. -Ed]
Luthra & Luthra too is in the process of revising its starting salary figures, which will be announced in June.
Salary Survey data
Legally India has conducted a survey of salaries across top legal recruiters combining results of last year's Legally India associate satisfaction survey and salary data obtained from a number of top law schools' recruitment committees and interviews with students and associates.
All figures (see table right) have been sent for verification to the law firms or organisations in question although several firms declined to comment or were unavailable for comment.
The top salary paid to freshers, excluding any bonus elements, is AZB Mumbai's newly hiked Rs 11.4 lakh figure, but this is closely followed by five-year old Delhi firm S&R Associates, which pays a basic package of Rs 10.8 lakh per annum to graduates.
Trilegal and AZB Delhi follow next with packages around Rs 10 lakh.
Amarchand and J Sagar Associates both offer a basic salary package of Rs 9.6 lakh per year, excluding bonuses, while Luthra & Luthra freshers will earn Rs 9 lakh per annum.
The in-house sector too pays very competitive salaries, according to our findings, with IFMR and ICICI paying Rs 8.8 lakh and Rs 8.6 lakh to freshers on average.
Law firms Wadia Ghandy, Khaitan & Co, Talwar Thakore, Desai & Diwanji and Nishith Desai Associates pay between Rs 7.2 lakh and Rs 8.5 lakh to fresh graduates.
Khaitan & Co's Mumbai office also operates a bonus scheme whereby fresher's base salaries, which are between Rs 7.2 and 8.5 lakh, can be augmented by performance-based bonuses of an additional 60 per cent at the top end.
Desai & Diwanji too operates an incentive system for freshers, where in addition to the variable quality-dependent base salary of between Rs 6 and 8.4 lakhs and a performance based bonus, associates can earn an additional 2 per cent of their billings and an additional 10 per cent of billings where they have generated the work themselves.
Nishith Desai Associates (NDA) too operates a different salary structure, where the first year salary is technically Rs 12 lakh, although only 7.2 are paid out on a monthly basis. The remainder will get paid out to associates only if they have stayed with the firm for three years.
However, in the second year of NDA associates' career no salary is separately retained with Rs 12 lakh being taken as the base amount for any second-year increases.
NDA is also one of the few firms where lawyers are employees of the partnership rather than being hired on retainer as independent advocates as is the case at most Indian law firms.
Crawford Bayley has a very flexible starting salary structure. While the basic pay is understood to be around Rs 4.8 lakh per year, this is understood to vary widely between departments and in some cases be up to Rs 10.6 lakh per year.
Graduates with jobs as Supreme Court judicial clerks would currently earn the least out of the surveyed legal recruiters with a base package of between Rs 1.8 and 2.4 lakh per year, although it is understood that these figures are currently under revision.
Correction: IFMR's basic starting salary figure was originally stated to be Rs 8.8 lakh. This figure includes all total cost to the company, including fixed, variable, relocation and non-cash benefits. The fixed annual salary for freshers is Rs 6 lakh to Rs 6.5 lakh. Many thanks to IFMR for pointing out the error. IFMR recruited two students from NUJS Kolkata, and one each from ILS Pune, Nalsar Hyderabad and NLS Bangalore this year.
The starting salary table is a work-in-progress that will be gradually updated with more firms and starting remuneration figures when Legally India can authoritatively confirm such data. No salary data was published without at least two independent and reliable sources confirming the same figure. Nevertheless some of the figures were only reasonable approximations of the data collected.
If you wish to help, please email us confidentially at or via our anonymous contact form to contribute any salary data or if you think there is an error in any of these published figures.
We will also use the above figures as a base to analyse and verify other findings from the associate satisfaction survey, further results of which we aim to publish shortly.
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On year-on-year raise it would be hard for us to give accurate figures as this is the first such published survey that we can rely on.
However, we will keep updating the table and now that we have baseline figures in future years we can analyse trends in more detail.
Best regards,
Kian
Therefore analysis is tough, as salaries can fluctuate widely even at the same seniority level.
However, we will do what we can if possible, without compromising the privacy of individuals.
@4 - The published salaries reflect remuneration that was offered throughout the 2009-10 recruitment season and for Amarchand the figures were consistent at 9.6 lakh (excluding bonus).
We understand that Amarchand may be in the process of revising its salaries although the firm was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
Best regards,
Kian
So, you should include this component as well while
However, in light of the difficulties with even confirming the basic package with law firms and in the interests of retaining some sort of parity between figures we had to start somewhere.
Once you put bonuses in it, analysis and accurately confirming figures becomes 10 times as difficult. However, as we get more data on this we hope to be able to provide a level of bonus transparency too.
For Bharucha & Partners we did not have enough data points to publish a reliable figure at this stage, but from what we do have the firm's salary figures do not appear to be in the top 10.
However, we aim to confirm more figures and update the table regularly.
Best regards,
Kian
#9 agree with you - just wonder if the feudal lords care about our comments at all.
However, we did not include bonus figures for any organisation in the list but stuck with basic fixed salary portions only for now.
Best regards,
Kian
Great work on this table. For years, Indian lawyers had to rely on the word-of-mouth campaigning process to gather any meaningful salary information. Now, there is a good starting point and I am fully confident that you will do a great job of updating it.
Now, as some of the commenters have posted already, it will be nice to have a separate post/table/entry with salary statistics on senior lawyers as well. Particularly, it would be interesting to see 4 levels - Salary at Year 3, Salary at Year 5, Salary at Year 8 and Partnership Salary (both equity and non-equity). Collecting information on the fourth category might be difficult, but doable with some persistent contacts and asking for non-identifiable general numbers.
This will help newly-minted lawyers have a fuller picture of a law firm. For instance, are law firms luring graduates with a higher starting salary, but then lag behind other firms in terms of how much compensation they are willing to pay to the senior associates? Are compensation structures more equitable and merit-oriented at some firms versus the others? These are some of the questions that a more detailed and thorough 4-level analysis (plus the initial starting salary level) will bring to the table.
Good luck with all your efforts and congratulations on putting together a wonderful website.
Associates in L&S are also perturbed that even the annual increment has not been released so far. There has not been a word about annual bonus either! An eerie silence prevails in L&S.
e.g Firm X gave 2 lakhs cash + 3 gold necklaces, Firm Y paid 1 lakh + 2 gold necklaces etc
And Kian, I would certainly be interested in your response to Number 22's question to you!!
AWESOME
Who is it? Trilegal?
whoever is 22... pls give some firm names
"AZB FRESHER WILL DRAW THE SAME SALARY AS THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA DRAW
AWESOME"
moron. the president of india gets more perks than the US prez. She is also a [...] and a crackpot ([alleged] bank scam worth crores, shielding brother from murder charges ,supporting forcible sterilisation of disabled , seeing ghosts etc, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratibha_Patil
Now if only you could post the same for litigating lawyers, in the hope that it shames them into paying even quarter decent retainers.
1. DSK Legal
2. Dua
3. Platinum Partners
4. ELP
5. ALMT Legal
6. Majmudar
7. ARA
8. Hemant Sahai
by the way- Awesome work LI- Way to go!
I am guessing you one of those sorts who sits and does statistical surveys on what paychecks others so get seriously GET A LIFE!!!!!
On the stats of others' paychecks, unless you did that, all you'll do is to hold on to your present not-so-fancy paying job. I am not as saintly as you are to get a life by not being bothered how much I make.
1. DSK Legal
2. Dua
3. Platinum Partners
4. ELP
5. ALMT Legal
6. Majmudar
7. ARA
8. Hemant Sahai
by the way- Awesome work LI- Way to go!
All big firms refuse mandates. And Barucha isn't exactly large in terms of headcount, and the partners are very well-regarded. SO they will have more work than they can take on. Salary, including bonus, can only be compared to WL if they pay 15 lakhs in base pay (and 20 lakhs after bonus). WL paid 300k after bonus when other firms were paying 160k base and 200k after bonus in the peak days of 2007.
If a Pangea insider is disputing the salary (which I also find hard to believe, having seen Pangea's PPTs in my 4th yr of college) then at least present what info he "claims" to be the reality. SMS speak may be deleted, but no one needs to make a reasoned point when commenting on this website. And when an insider is giving us a scoop, at least let us know what the dude was trying to say. Pangea is not paying 6 lakhs Kian; 4 lakhs is more like it. I know as I attended their PPT (not to get a job there, but to see what the deal is).
The immediate priority will be to confirm starting salaries across a majority of law firms and corporates.
Thanks to the ones who have emailed us already with tips. If your firm is not included in the above list or you know the figures of firms, please do email us anonymously.
We did have figures for many more firms and corporates but were unable to publish these as for some we only had one law school source.
In order to respect privacy and get an accurate number we will aim for at least two different sources from different colleges.
@57 - Re: Pangea3 insider
We do generally post up comments questioning the facts of the stories. However, in this case the comment had terrible grammar, was written in text message speak, made unbacked claims about how they were treated at Pangea3 and gave a very very very low salary figure.
We are all for debate but in this case the post had all the hallmarks of a disgruntled (ex?)employer or a rival.
Honestly, you did not miss very much with our redaction.
Best regards,
Kian
Just one point, which may not be relevant in the present context ... many people rely on LI for data. And Pangea salary is def. not 6 lakhs. Just wondering if they offer variable packages, or keep 2 lakhs as a discretionary component.
Cheers.
#57
I worked for the recruitment committee in my non-national but well regarded university. NLS NUJS NALSAR (and maybe NLU J not sure) were given a slightly higher salary than us! In our time (not so long ago) it did make a lot of difference where you graduated from.
I joined a firm which did not differentiate much, but it did most of its hiring from a handful of NLUs.. Kian, will mail you the details shortly, will find out about other offices as well.. request others to do the same
Generally most students who study at these "other law schools" have already tried and failed to get through the Nationals (I am from one amongst them) and the ones who got through, do deserve to be there(though there are exceptions- Quota, Reserved seats etc.)and them getting higher paying jobs through campus placements(not the other ways)is a very genuine thing and they deserve appreciation for there hardwork.
However equally exists a bias in the mind of recruiters that all the Law is taught only in the National Law Schools which is well known and denying that is like keeping your eyes close to the world thinking that they cant see you.One who is at such advantageous position should show his sense of responsibility by refraining himself from making such statements.
Regarding Salaries, though I agree that most firms pay all freshers the same salary, but this cant be generalised it goes on case to case basis depending on student as well as firm..
In response to #64 and 65, yes, we are aware that some firms do pay variable salaries depending on where recruits join from.
Currently our research unfortunately focused mostly on national law school recruitment, so yes, the data sets are limited.
Please do send us any information you have and we will definitely try to incorporate it, however!
Best,
Kian
NUJS has had some of the best recruitments EVERY year (barring the recession hit years, where it still managed to fare amongst the top few law schools for recruitments, it's been a 100% track record with the top-most recruiters in terms of industry repute and/or salaries offered) and on occasion perhaps even better than NALSAR! In any case, that discussion is moot because the packages offered to students at NLS, NUJS and NALSAR are identical.
If you yourself are so ignorant about the facts, then why preach? Whatever did you base your assumption on anyway? That NALSAR came 1st in the MPL and NUJS 3rd? IF that, then two things. First, as many have pointed out throughout the year, the MPL needs a revamp in its scoring parameters. Its undeniable that NUJS had amongst the biggest wins in the country this year. Despite having participated in such fewer moots and having dealt with internal administrative obstacles, the teams performed phenomenally well. Second, this was just the 1st season.
If not that, then I just don't know on what basis you've relegated NUJS to a tier 2 university!
I now realise that we may have oversimplified the Pangea3 salaries somewhat, which is entirely our fault.
Our survey figures pointed to a figure for Pangea3 from top national law schools of around Rs 4.5 lakh
Below the statement from Pangea3, which we did not parse correctly and therefore erroneously included a bonus element rather than just the base package.
"Our salaries for Freshers in 2009-10 from top 10 on campus recruiting programs was 4 to 6 lacs with the range relating to variable based incentive compensation separate from other benefits that some companies include as "CTC". This means that our top performers earned just under 6 lacs in base salary and bonus. In 2010-11 this will increase to 5 to 7 lacs.
All of our campus and off-campus fresher and non-fresher recruiting and offers are based on skills assessment tests both spoken and written. We reserve our on campus offers to top test performers and interview stand-outs.
We hire Freshers who test below that level at a lower compensation but at the Associate level typically in the 3 to 5 lac range including merit based incentive compensation. For those who require more training and testing to determine if they will qualify for these Associate positions, we hire them as Interns/Apprentices at a lower salary level."
I regret the error - we should have made this clearer in the original write-up and will clarify the absolute figures and correct appropriately as soon as possible.
Best regards,
Kian
However, once you have entered a top firm, you will be treated on par - your STARTING SALARY will be the same whether you are from a NLS or a non-NLS. HOWEVER, salaries may vary over the years and usually the national law school kids tend to end up on the higher end of the salary brackets since their performance is better than the non - NLSs people.
As per my observations at my various internships where i've worked alongside several of these i'm-a-NLU-genius fellows, their skills are not always above ours. Infact, several of them are quite...dumb. I agree, the cream of NLU's are better than non-NLUs'...however..on an average, we're fairly equal, and at times better. College's like symbiosis and ILS are much older than NALSAR and NUJS, and have more of legacy, so to speak, in the legal fraternity.
It is sad to have such a bias towards NLS grads, but I guess the elimination has to be somewhere and somehow.
Next they'll want disclosure of college when deciding whether a lawyers arguments are good or bad.
Dismal. Truly.
As far as your point about equity partners are concerned, you'll be happy to know that fresh talent (albeit from the the next generation of the same lineage) will rightfully claim equity partnership sooner than later. In such a case, why bother about those
folks who have been slogging their asses for the last 25 years.
I work in an LPO and we have people from P3 scurrying to us the moment they come to know we are hiring - and our starting rates for newly-minted law school grads are nowhere near what you have ascribed to P3 (but definitely more than what they pay).
Last week I saw one of these wild 'planted' stories in LI which said P3 is going to invest 48 crores for their Delhi office. Well, that's something to chew on....!! Maybe they can start using some of that dosh by actually paying the guys they hire (half of whom are temps - "apprentices" acco. to your note above).
Separately, like many other have commented, it would be great to know the salaries at higher levels in these as well as other law firms.
Something has to shame these senior counsel into paying their bright juniors more. It is really sickening - so much so, that graduates from the national universities have little choice but to accept corporate law firm jobs even if they actually want to litigate. There was a great blog on this as well - Due diligence and Dreaming Beyond it. Legally India could do the entire legal profession a world of good if it takes this up - interview these damn senior counsel and put them in a spot by asking them about junior's salaries.
:-)
i heard platinum pay much higher, is it true???
I m planning to apply for internship at above mentioned places
can u plz plz plz let me know at the ealiest
thanks Kian !!
Thanks,
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