Staff at a top London law firm have been told that they can work from home full time – if they take a 20% pay cut.
Managing partners at Stephenson Harwood are offering lawyers and other staff the option as City firms try to move beyond solely office-based working in a post-pandemic cultural shift to flexible and remote models.
Junior lawyers at the company have starting salaries of £90,000, meaning anyone taking up the offer would lose about £18,000.
The new working policy would apply to staff at its London office and most of the company’s international offices in Paris, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. Partners will not be eligible, though. Full equity partners receive an average of £685,000 annually.
It takes the opposite approach to Airbnb, whose co-founder and chief executive Brian Chesky tweeted last week that employees could work from anywhere without having to take a pay cut.
