Bloomberg Law quotes Edwards Gibson extensively in its article 'Elite UK Firms Are Losing London Salary Battle to US Invaders.'

Bloomberg Law extensively quotes Edwards Gibson Director Scott Gibson in its article 'Elite UK Firms Are Losing London Salary Battle to US Invaders.' In the piece, Meghan Tribe discusses the significant 35% - 40% pay disparity on the associate Cravath scale between elite UK law firms, specifically the Magic Circle, and their US counterparts. The article also outlines the struggle UK law firms have in matching US law firm partner compensation due to the disparity in profitability together with the negative ramifications this has for associate and partner retention for UK law firms vs their US cousins.

In addition to Gibson outlining some of the reasons behind the relative decline of the Magic Circle, the passage refers to extensive partner hiring by US law firms in 2023 using statistics from Edwards Gibson’s 78th edition of Law Firm Partner Moves in London – specifically the 18 partner hires by Kirkland & Ellis and the 14 lateral hires by Paul Weiss (respectively the two US firms linked with hiring individual partners in London on as much as $20 million each last year).

The article ends by reminding us that, at the time of writing, the mergers and acquisitions, initial public offering, and private-equity boom, which provided plenty of work and drove associate salary hikes in 2020 and 2021, has yet to rebound in 2024 with Gibson stating: “There’s going to be more of an issue of whether there’s enough work around to justify these crazy salaries.”

For the full article click here.