Skip to main content

Lawyers and Accountants earn £80,000 a year, if not a lot more


 
In November 2019, during the winter election campaign, a BBC Question Time audience member informed the panel that he was a member of the working class and considered that £80,000 salary was not a lot of money and that it was a bit of a struggle surviving on this. He expressed incredulity, along with a significant portion of the audience, when Richard Burgon, a Labour MP, stated that he had been a solicitor before getting into parliament, and that his salary had been £40,000.
It is one of the oldest examples of fake news that exists in society today, and dates back many years. Solicitors & accountants are considered by the general population to earn a lot more money than the average wage. The big 4 firms in accountancy and the city law firms in London distort the figures somewhat and make headline news, detracting away from the reality for the majority of fee earners in both professions.
Our own consultants were astonished to hear this assertion because we work with solicitors in all parts of the profession, including the high street and at sole practitioner level, and we know that salary levels for 90% of solicitors are lower than £45k.
Similarly we also work with accountancy practices and undertake the recruitment of senior accountants. We know that exactly the same issue arises. At least 75% of accountants working in public practice do not earn more than £45,000 per year.
It is unfortunate that this perception exists because it does mean increasing numbers of people applying to enter the legal profession and the accountancy profession without actually knowing the true facts as to how hard it is to make a living out of accountancy or law, and that the vast majority of lawyers and accountants do not earn large amounts of money.
The next time somebody stands up on a mainstream political show and states that lawyers and accountants earn huge amounts of money, maybe, just maybe, somebody on the show can be well enough informed to correct the obvious fake news immediately, before they spread the myth even further. Its good news for the various universities offering LLB, ACCA and LPC courses, but I am not sure about the professions in general.


Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a non-practising Solicitor. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment provides online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals. Visit our Website to search our Vacancy Database.
Labels:
Location: Mold CH7, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Overpaid Charity CEOs - top 40 of high paid employees - updated 2022

In 2014, we wrote an article about high pay in the charity sector after the Charity Commission started to require all charities to disclose pay of senior executives earning more than £60,000.    We have updated the list for 2022, with a comparison chart so you can see the difference between 2014 and 2022. We have included the source of the most recent salary levels and the year refers to the accounts year we extracted the salary information from.   2022 Top 40 Chart of High Paying Charities Charity Highest salary Year Consumers’ Association £390k-£400k 2020 MSI Reproductive Choices £240k-£250k 2020 Save the Children International £285k-£300k 2020 Cancer Research UK £240k-£250k 2020 The British Red Cross Society £170k-£180k 2020 Age UK £180k-£190k 2020
25 comments
Read more

Is it possible to work as a Paralegal when you are a Qualified Solicitor

  This question comes up all the time and is quite a common query that we imagine the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) are getting better at answering due to the sheer number of people asking the question. Many years ago the advice seemed a bit varied at times, but we have recently had a candidate who wanted to work in a locum role in the short term and waiting to go back on the Roll and get a practising certificate after some time spent outside the profession. She has been given fairly concise advice on whether she could work as a paralegal whilst waiting to be readmitted which we are repeating here. This article is written as a discussion point and is not intended to be advice in any shape or form. For full advice on your particular set of circumstances please speak to the SRA (or whoever else you like, but please do not depend on the information in this article!). The SRA have a simple online test to determine if you need a practising certificate and this i
Post a Comment
Read more

What questions are asked in an Investors in People Assessment?

Recently Ten Percent Legal Recruitment was assessed for the investor in people accreditation. We worked very hard on this and spent some time as a company ensuring that all our procedures and policies were in place and that our staff were aware of the various requirements of the Investor in People process. We wondered how the assessment would go and also what the questions were likely to be during the interviews. The assessor was very friendly and explained from the outset what she was wanting to do and we were already aware that we would have thirty minute interviews with the directors and managers and twenty minute interviews with the staff. We also had the Investors in People programme so we were able to look and see what the actual questions would be based on, but there was nowhere to indicate what questions would be asked in the investor in people assessments. So if this helps anyone else, here are the questions we were asked in our investors in people accreditation: The assessor
Read more