欧洲律师协会秘书长Jonathan Goldsmith撰文比较英国、欧洲**几国的律师收入情况。


The Law Society's Research Unit is in the process of publishing multi-part assessments of the legal services market. The reports often confirm what we already know – for instance, that there are two solicitors’ professions, and aren’t the City types doing well, while those poor devils in the small and medium-sized firms are struggling somewhat?

I shall focus on a single aspect of the research, relating to the profitability of small and medium firms.

To start with solicitors, sole practitioners (if I understand the tables properly) had ‘mean profits’ of £40,000 in 2009/10 (which signifies the gross figure before deducting notional salaries and notional interest). This rose to around £60,000 per partner in firms with 2-4 partners; £100,000 in firms with 5-10 partners; and £140,000 with firms of 11-25 partners.

Of course, figures for lawyers on the continent are in euros (currently £1 equals around €1.16, although the ratio would have been different for the period in question.) The average annual taxable income in 2009 of lawyers in Belgium (French-speaking), Italy and Spain stood at between €46,000 and €48,000, where ‘average annual taxable income’ means gross fees minus expenses paid to third parties, operating expenses and reimbursements (employees, lawyers, bailiffs, experts, translators).

And in France, the average income figures are pushed up because of the earnings in Paris, which are 60% higher than elsewhere in the country. So, France’s average income did not sit within the €46,000-€48,000 band, but rather at €74,586.

There are other interesting outcomes. France has the most women lawyers among the six countries surveyed (at 50.9% in 2011), Germany the least (32%).