Corporate recruiter ICICI Bank has increased its basic pay package for new recruiters by almost one and a half lakh rupees taking the basic annual package to 10.5 lakh, as Bharucha & Partners, Juris Corp and Majmudar & Co hiked their fresher pay. Tatva Legal kicked off its first law school recruitment season with packages of Rs 8 lakh.

ICICI’s hike is a 16 per cent increase in pay from the base salary of 9.05 lakh that was offered to law graduates last year.

ICICI general counsel Pramod Rao said that this was a cost to company figure including certain benefits, which could be converted into a retainership after six months.

Bharucha & Partners is also understood to have upped its starting pay to Rs 8 lakh per year.

Meanwhile, Juris Corp has revised its base package for new recruits to Rs 6 to 6.5 lakh per annum from Rs 4.8 to 6 lakh last year, according to partner Detty Davis.

It is understood that Dua Associates breakaway Tatva Legal, which recruited eight freshers from national law schools this year, offered a base package of Rs 8 lakh rupees with a guaranteed minimum bonus of Rs 2 lakh.

Majmudar & Co, which recruited a total of seven freshers from NLSIU Bangalore, Nalsar Hyderabad, NLU Jodhpur and NUJS Kolkata, is now paying Rs 8.43 lakh per year on average in Mumbai and between Rs 4.3 lakh and Rs 6 lakh in Bangalore, said Majmudar managing partner Akil Hirani. In Mumbai the variable bonus is up to 26 per cent of base salaries.

The Supreme Court has also increased the stipend given to judicial clerks. The new stipend is now Rs 3 lakh rupees up from the Rs 1.8 to 2.4 lakh that was offered last year.

Most of the other recruiters have not yet been confirmed to have hiked the basic package offered last year as Trilegal, J Sagar Associates (JSA), Luthra & Luthra, Khaitan & Co, ICICI Bank and S&R Associates all continued offering seven digit base packages.

AZB & Partners still leads the pack as the highest paying recruiters paying 11.4 lakh rupees to fresh hires while Khaitan and Trilegal are offering a little less with an annual package of 10.8 lakh rupees.

The salary data was compiled by Legally India from law school recruitment committees, expanding on research first published out by Legally India in June 2010 (see detailed methodology below table).

Each of the firms paying above Rs 10 lakh offer to pay a bonus of up to 30% of the base package, while Amarchand and Luthra offer a bonus of up to Rs 3 lakh in campus recruitments. AZB is again leading the law firms by officially paying up to Rs 3.5 lakh as bonus to fresh grads.

Among foreign firms offering trainee contracts (TCs) to law school grads, Allen & Overy is the most generous paymaster offering an annual package of £38,000 (Rs 27.64 lakh) to freshly hired trainees while Herbert Smith pays £37,500 (Rs 27.2 lakh).

Linklaters, Ashurst and Norton Rose offer packages of £37,400 (Rs 27 lakh), £37,000 (Rs 26.9 lakh) and £35,700 (Rs 25.9 lakh) respectively.

Check out Legallypedia’s Indian lawyer salaries page (to be updated)

Indian lawyer salaries

Source: Legally India research: interviews with students and college recruitment committees and putting those figures to law firm or organisation for correction or comment. Recruitment committee figures were only used where at least two different law schools or students confirmed the same figure.
*CTC: "cost to company" figure can include other benefits than just base salary.