Salary expectations (city law firms)

[ABZombie]

I'm applying for a senior role and need to work out what to put in relation to salary expectations. I usually prefer not to talk salary until I have been offered the role but here there is an application form that requires an answer, and the text box only allows figures (so I cannot put 'market rate' or similar).

Although I have a lot of private practice experience, I'm currently public sector so my current salary is not a good guide- the firm will be aware of this though as it's very common for lawyers to move between public and private sectors in my area (currently work for a regulator which is v valuable experience in this sort of private practice regulatory work but salaries are obviously not comparable).

How would you approach this?

Typical advice is to set the range of what you would expect for this role. It's not about what you earn currently - that's a red herring because as you say the two are not equivalent.

Do some research. AI will be helpful here because there are lots of publicly available guides, just get it to cite sources. Ideally speak to a couple of private practice recruiters to get a feel for the market. Senior for partner will be v different to senior for Of Counsel/Snr Associate and different again to senior within Know How.

Good luck!

It will depend massively on the particular firm and role. Some recruiters publish guides. Roll on Friday publishes reports of salaries in its news section (but the inside info section also has info but mainly on junior salaries). There are also quite a few lawyers on here - ask about the firm and role and apply a large pinch of salt to the answers but you might get something useful out of them.

Yeah I think AI is probably your best bet other than being slightly more specific about area / seniority on here. It’s usually quite difficult to find out what the salaries are much above NQ as there is a lot of bunching.