Manchester
NQ Salaries: £40,000-£60,000+
Outside of London, Manchester has the largest legal market in the UK and 2024 was anything but a quiet year for the capital of the North. Employment law had a particular boom last year, with the introduction of expanded rights for employees, surrounding flexible working. Post pandemic, flexible working always seemed like a grey area when it came to employment contracts, but with the new legislation, this is no longer the case.
In addition, Court of Protection solicitors were in particular high demand throughout the course of the year. All firms, from boutique to larger national practices were seeking to bolster their healthcare based practice areas to keep up with the ever growing workload of referred work from their medical and clinical negligence departments.
A practice area that didn’t see as much movement as some firms were hoping was Commercial law, more specifically within private practice. It seems that the end goal for commercial solicitors has rather changed in recent times. At a senior level, moving in-house is becoming much more common. The distinct lack of time recording, less arduous working hours and strong pension contribution seemingly more than makes up for the pay disparity between the two options.
Liverpool:
NQ Salaries: £35,000-£50,000+
Liverpool fills a strange niche within the North West legal market. Solicitors with their roots in Liverpool see themselves moving away from the hustle and bustle of Manchester life, back to Merseyside to see out their career. Despite the movement tending to be at a more senior level, a lot of firms have been in desperate need for new Heads of Department, within an array of practice areas, more commonly both Private Client and Commercial Property.
Cheshire:
NQ Salaries: £35,000-£45,000+
Cheshire has had a strong year in comparison to the other regions surrounding Manchester, namely due to their access to more niche work. This work comes in the form of agricultural practice areas. Commercial Property has been particularly buoyant throughout 2024 but the biggest waves were caused by the changes to Agricultural Property Relief. This also enabled Private Client Solicitors with Tax Planning experience to become worth their weight in gold.
Lancashire:
NQ Salaries: £30,000-£40,000
Lancashire had a steady year, seeing growth within all practice areas. Generally, Private Client lawyers moved from the outskirts of Lancashire to firms that gave them access to work spilling out from Manchester. This was largely facilitated by a number of traditionally Lancashire based practices opening up and/or expanding their Manchester offices in a big way.
