New Zealand Law Society and Momentum release legal salary survey report
The New Zealand Law Society and legal recruitment company Momentum have released a report on the findings of a survey of legal salaries.
The survey was carried out in September and October 2011 and collected information from over 1100 lawyers. A full report of the findings is now available on the Law Society's my.lawsociety website.
The bulk of the information in the survey covers legal salaries, with most detail provided for lawyers in their first nine years of practice. The report says there is much more variability in salaries after that point.
While a wide variation in salary ranges was shown, the report found that the average salary paid to a lawyer in private practice with 10 or more years of experience is $114,100. The median salary was $95,000 and the range of salaries was between $27,000 and $175,000.
A lawyer with five years of experience was paid an average of $82,400 if working in a large law firm with over 19 partners, $67,200 if working in a smaller law firm, $102,700 if working as an in-house counsel for a business, or $71,000 if working as an in-house counsel for central and local government, industry associations and not for profit organisations. Salaries also vary according to location, with lawyers in Auckland and Wellington receiving higher average salaries.
As well as providing information on salary ranges and averages, the report shows average employment benefits and reports on the general level of satisfaction among lawyers with their salary, benefits and employment conditions.