<\/p>\n
Young lawyers demand “living wages” amid explanations that law firms do not find them “very useful” but rather a “net loss”.<\/p>\n
For the past few weeks, social media and the opinion pages of various publications have been abuzz with junior lawyers lamenting that many firms do not pay them sufficient remuneration.<\/p>\n
The issue, as told to Dawn.com<\/em> by Hassan A. Niazi, Advocate High Court and former faculty at the Lahore Univerity of Management Sciences (Lums), is about the salary of junior associates working in law firms or chambers that primarily practise litigation.<\/p>\n The issue was highlighted during a panel discussion organised by Lums on September 14, titled \u2018Law Firm Economics in Pakistan: What are you worth?\u2019.<\/p>\n The event was followed by a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) by Aman Rehan, a lawyer and Lums alumna, wherein she detailed the challenges faced by fresh graduates in the field.<\/p>\n These included junior lawyers being asked to prioritise \u201clearning over everything\u201d and the different treatment meted out to those working at a firm and those working in-house.<\/p>\n On Sunday night, Qanoondan held a Space session on X, where various lawyers detailed their experiences and digital rights activist Nighat Dad also attended the session.<\/p>\n The LLAA has now organised a \u2018Part II\u2019 of the discussion at 6pm on September 30, which will be open to all and held online.<\/p>\n Salman Ijaz, ex-vice president of the Lums Law Alumni Association (LLAA) and also one of the speakers at the event, told Dawn.com<\/em>, \u201cIn the background of the larger economic crisis, there was an ongoing conversation in the Lums law community regarding the (historically) low payscales, poor benefits and difficult working conditions for junior lawyers.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that there was \u201cready consensus that junior lawyers are compensated very poorly (relative to their employers who bill in the millions per matter)\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cEven at many well-known firms, fresh graduates are expected to complete unpaid internships that can span from three months to two years, even while they are expected to work full-time,\u201d Ijaz said.<\/p>\n The lawyer recalled that the issues highlighted included \u201cregulatory failure on the part of the bar councils in respect of licensure and training, billing practices of senior lawyers, the absence of true firm culture, and importantly, tight secrecy around actual compensation practices\u201d.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThe Pakistani legal practice still follows the apprenticeship model in the training of junior lawyers but without guaranteeing them any of the protections that apprentices in other fields have under laws like the Apprenticeship Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ijaz also shared a new project, titled \u2019Legal Profession Compensation & Benefits Mastersheet (FY2024)<\/a>, which aims to gather compensation data for legal roles at firms, chambers and think tanks as well as in-house roles in a spreadsheet.<\/p>\n Dawn.com<\/em> has not independently verified the data in the spreadsheet.<\/p>\n Ijaz highlighted that the recently-created spreadsheet did not account for the fact that an \u201coverwhelmingly large portion of the legal profession is organised informally\u201d, therefore it lacked responses from lawyers who have worked with \u201cmany small chambers and smaller outfits\u201d.<\/p>\n He added that the consensus was that such informal setups paid first-year associates and fresh grads \u201cnothing\u201d. The lawyer responded in the affirmative when asked if he thought the data collected till now was accurate and in line with what he expected.<\/p>\n According to Hassan Niazi, a fresh graduate is usually hired as a first-year associate at a law firm, which is the lowest position in a firm\u2019s hierarchy.<\/p>\n After that, one gets promoted to the role of a senior associate, following which they become a partner at a firm, or an associate partner at some, where they are paid a monthly salary while using the title of a partner.<\/p>\n Niazi told Dawn.com<\/em> that what most young lawyers were asking was that they should at the minimum be paid a \u201cliving wage\u201d \u2014 a wage high enough to maintain a normal standard of living.<\/p>\n While the countrywide minimum wage was raised<\/a> to Rs32,000 earlier this year and to Rs35,000 in Sindh<\/a>, a \u201cliving wage\u201d would mean higher pay than the minimum wage.<\/p>\n When asked to describe what the current pay looks like for junior lawyers, Niazi said: \u201cWhile the salary structure varies from firm to firm and is often completely at the discretion of the firm owners, the most common model is that junior associates are paid a fixed sum on a monthly basis regardless of how many cases they may have worked on.\u201d<\/p>\n Niazi estimated that the average starting salary of a junior associate having fewer than two years of experience is around Rs25,000-Rs30,000 per month. He emphasised there were \u201cvery few firms\u201d that were paying a maximum salary of Rs50,000, which, he noted was not a living wage.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started practice in 2013, my starting salary was Rs15,000 a month. Despite inflation over the years, the starting salary in most law firms has remained static,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n While one of the senior lawyers had termed junior lawyers a \u201cnet loss\u201d to firms \u2014 as is detailed later in this piece \u2014 Niazi said, \u201cWorking at a law firm as a first-year associate is a net loss for the employee as you are paying for all expenses out of your own pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n How did the debate begin?<\/h2>\n
What are the organisers saying?<\/h2>\n
Current pay structure<\/h2>\n