UK lawyers' salaries are threatened by outsourcing to or immigration of lawyers from the new EU accession states - who are paid up to 13 times less than their UK counterparts - lawyers said this week in response to a salary survey.


London law firm Lawrence Graham asked firms in 13 EU countries - including accession states Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Malta, Poland and Slovenia - to assess the earnings at mid-tier firms for three-to-four year and newly qualified lawyers in their countries.



The UK returned the highest figures with an average €70,000 and €105,000 (£47,000 and £71,000) for newly qualified and three-to-four year qualified lawyers respectively.



The lowest newly qualified figures were €6,000 and €7,500 for Poland and the Czech Republic respectively.



Three-to-four year qualified lawyers in Poland were the lowest paid on €7,200, followed by their Greek, Cypriot and Czech contemporaries, on €17,000, €18,600 and €22,000 respectively.



Yvonne Gallagher, a partner with Lawrence Graham, said: 'Attention has focused on the impact of enlargement on blue-collar workers, but this suggests the effect could be much greater on the professions, where people tend to be fluent in English in the accession states, have comparable training and experience, and yet work more flexibly for much lower salaries.'



She added: 'In the short term, there may be more applicants for jobs from outside the UK, but longer term we may see skilled work being outsourced to cheaper markets and downward pressure on UK salaries.'



Giles Rubens, a director at legal consultancy Hildebrandt International, said: 'The real cost advantage lies in outsourcing, [where] the opportunities are still underestimated. There are still far too many lawyers higher up the chain in the UK whose work could be outsourced. For example, in management work for commercial property and banking work, discovery work on high-value, complex litigation, and due diligence on major property acquisitions. People haven't thought enough about this yet.'



Mr Rubens said one example of work that could be outsourced to the EU accession states is defendant insurance work, where he said the lack of a significant time lapse between countries would be an advantage.



He added: 'If law firms do not lead the way there may be moves by insurers to form a captive law firm in one of the accession states using a joint venture.'



The first outsourcing of offshore legal work started recently in South Africa, after specialist Hemel Hempstead-based personal injury firm Underwoods launched a new law firm there through a company called Law Abroad (see [2004] Gazette, 1 April, 1).



By Jeremy Fleming