Amarchand, Luthra & Luthra, Khaitan & Co and Trilegal have all ramped up their basic starter pay above Rs 10 lakhs, with offered packages including bonuses now running up to Rs 15 lakh at the top end.

Khaitan & Co's Mumbai office made the biggest leap to Rs 10.8 lakh per annum from Rs 7.2 and 8.5 lakh – an increase in base salaries by up to 50 per cent – for the batch joining in June 2011.

Last year Khaitan & Co said it had paid out bonuses of up to 60 per cent of base salaries, while for the batch joining in June 2011 offering a package of up to Rs 4 lakhs as a performance dependent bonus to freshers.

"Is there any other answer but to attract talent?" mused Khaitan & Co Mumbai partner Upendra Joshi about the reason for the hike in starter incomes. "Our philosophy is purely this – we perceive that we are growing and we would like to share the growth right from fresher to the senior most associate."

Khaitan & Co offered the new packages to a total of 12 students it had recruited so far: eight from NUJS Kolkata and four from Nalsar Hyderabad. Joshi said that the firm planned to visit between three and four more campuses, including NLIU Bhopal, GNLU Gandhinagar and the two Pune law schools Symbiosis and ILS.

"We want to visit more colleges but it really depends on what numbers we get at these colleges and it's practically impossible to visit each and every college each year," said Joshi.

"With a little bit of a difference here and there, and in the odd case it might be more accentuated, but most of these colleges are on par with each other. In that sense there's no real downside not being able to visit each and every college," he explained.

Luthra & Luthra upped its base fresher remuneration by 13 per cent to Rs 10.2 lakh, which also applies retrospectively to all freshers who joined in 2010.

Including maximum performance based bonuses the offered package is Rs 12.6 lakh per year and in addition Luthra & Luthra also offers medical insurance benefit contributions equivalent to Rs 3 lakh per year.

Luthra & Luthra senior partner Mohit Saraf said that the firm regularly reviewed its salary figures. "We are moving [the salary of] everybody in the firm and we do that every year with effect from 1 April. I think this year we did in July and then we gave everybody." The pay hike is understood to have been passed at the firm's partner's meeting in early July.

Saraf said that the firm had recruited 35 students so far, with the majority coming from NLU Jodhpur, followed by NUJS, NLSIU Bangalore and Nalsar.

Trilegal has also now offered its upgraded base remuneration of Rs 10.8 lakh per year to all 2011 joiners, a plan that was first reported in June's original Legally India salary survey.

Trilegal offered a maximum bonus of Rs 2 lakh. Mumbai partner Nishant Parikh explained that the bonus was "primarily driven by the number of billable hours and overall performance of the associate and typically internally we've told ourselves that 20 to 25 per cent [of fee-earners] should be between the 90 and 100 per cent mark".

So far this recruitment season Trilegal has recruited 14, said Parikh: six from NLSIU Bangalore, two from NUJS Kolkata, one from Nalsar Hyderabad and five from NLU Jodhpur.

Amarchand Mangaldas, where the previous base salary package was Rs 9.6 lakh, has also offered larger base packages that are understood to be between Rs 10.3 and 10.8 lakh per year, although offer letters have not yet been circulated to students and the figure could still be subject to revision.

The total package offered by Amarchand including bonuses is between Rs 14 and 15 lakh now, according to Legally India interviews with students.

Amarchand's Mumbai region recruited a total of 41 students so far this year, hiring 12 each from GNLU and Nalsar, followed by nine from NUJS Kolkata and eight from NLSIU Bangalore.

Amarchand declined to comment or confirm any figures.

Top bands here and there