Firm Spy Salary Survey Revealed: Mid-Tier 2010 Graduate to 4th Year PQE Salaries

Firm Spy cannot guarantee the veracity of the figures quoted in this post

Today brings the third and by far the biggest installment of our Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey series. We have had some comments and emails relating to various aspects of our survey, including, amongst other things, the sample size and the means by which we can ensure that dodgy entries aren’t included.  And unlike the firms themselves, we wanted to answer these questions and respond to these criticisms directly.

HR has a laugh at FS expense

Essentially, we have no real way of ensuring that results are accurate. In fact, we suspect that a group of HR staff from one major firm (who we wont name, but no doubt many of you will guess) intentionally sought to distort the results recorded such that we would publish incorrect salary information from that firm. Yes, the lengths that firms will go to in order to keep salaries secret are that extreme!

So other than the top tier salaries – about which we are quite confident given higher sample sizes and less variation between the samples from the same year and office – we are not very confident that our results are accurate (by reason either of intentional firm distortion, a small sample size, mistake or a combination of all three).

For precisely this reason, we have decided today to publish all year levels of all mid tier firms across Australia from the graduate year through to 3-4 years PQE. These are the firms where the salary results are most open to doubt based on small sample sizes (in many cases only one sample), plus there is always the issue that the salaries we have published based on that low sample size are drawn from the low or high end of a salary band. In some circumstances, where there are major discrepancies between samples, we have published more than one salary. This could be the “low” and “high” ends of a salary band; it could be a mistake; or it could be a dodgy result engineered by an evil HR rep. We don’t know.

But heck, we thought we should give you all something to read and gossip about during a slow news week!

Melbourne

Graduates

• Norton Rose – 65,000
• Herbert Geer – 58,000

0-1 Years PQE

• Arnold Bloch Leibler – 79,000
• Norton Rose – 70,000
• Baker & McKenzie – 67,000

1-2 Years PQE

No Responses

2-3 Years PQE

• DLA Phillips Fox -  75,000/92,000
• Baker & McKenzie – 78,000/90,000
• Mills Oakley – 75,000
• Corrs Chambers Wesgarth – 93,000

3-4 Years PQE

• Holding Redlich – 95,000
• Norton Rose – 80,000/105,000
• DLA Phillips Fox – 88,000
• Landers – 95,000
• Corrs Chambers Wesgarth – 108,000

Sydney

Graduates

• Baker & McKenzie – 70,000
• Piper Alderman – 58,000
• Corrs Chambers Wesgarth – 72,000

0-1 Years PQE

• Holding Redlich – 72,000
• Corrs Chambers Wesgarth – 73,000/79,000

1-2 Years PQE

• Corrs Chambers Wesgarth – 89,000
• Norton Rose – 82,000

2-3 Years PQE

• Johnson Winter Slattery – 82,000
• Middletons – 92,000
• Piper Alderman – 72,500/80,000
• HWL Ebsworth -  85,000
• Corrs Chambers Wesgarth – 87,000
• Norton Rose – 85,000/88,000
• Gadens – 73,000

3-4 Years PQE

• HWL Ebsworth – 90,000
• Thomson Playford Cutlers  – 77,000
• Baker & McKenzie – 98,000

Brisbane

Graduates

• HWL Ebsworth – 50,000

0-1 Years PQE

• DLA Phillips Fox – 68,000
• Norton Rose – 68,000

1-2 Years PQE

• Herbert Geer – 78,000
• DLA Phillips Fox – 73,000

2-3 Years PQE

• DLA Phillips Fox – 77,000

Perth

• Corrs Chambers Wesgarth – 2-3 years PQE – 83,000
• Norton Rose – 2-3 years PQE – 107,000
• DLA Phillips Fox – 2-3 years PQE -  77,000
• Middletons – 3-4 years PQE- 105,000

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