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TRANSCRIPT
SALARYGUIDE 2021L E G A L
CHAPTER 1: The trends impacting the legal world
P3: COVID-19 And Back To The Future: When A Virus Stimulates InnovationsP4-5: The Death of The Expert Systems: Long Live The Artificial Intelligence
CHAPTER 2: Salaries in Luxembourg & Belgium
P6: First things firstP7-8: Reasons salaries can fluctuate
P9: Salaries in LuxembourgP10: Salaries in Belgium
CHAPTER 3: About us
P11: Who are we?P12: The rest of the team
P13: Our sources
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T SE D I T O R I A L
During most of our lifetimes, we have never been tested as much as the past 12 months.
We went through a change of lifestyle that only few could have imagined, we had to say
goodbye to loved ones and we had to endure a lot of psychological pressure.
At the same time, we have successfully adapted our work and life balance with the
overall embracement of working remotely. We have also learned to appreciate the little
things in life and to value the things that we hold dear, even more.
As Career Advisors, we've noticed that the past 12 months introduced a period of
insecurity on the labor market. For obvious reasons, talents and clients have massively
readapted their recruitment strategy: remote interviews and a more thorough
selection of candidates and opportunities.
In light of these strange times, we have received a lot of questions related to salaries
and remuneration policies. It is therefore in our view the right time to release a salary
guide. For Lawyers, in order to help them situate themselves amongst their peers and
for Firms to judge their remuneration policy.
Law Firms have shown time and time again that they are resilient to economic changes
and that it is a sector that has always kept and will maintain their prominent place in
society.
F A I S S A L A M E RH e a d o f t h e L e g a l D i v i s i o n
According to Daniel W. Linna Jr., Professor of Law and Director of LegalRnD (The Center for LegalServices Innovation at Michigan State), it seems that AI is already shaping the legal world oftomorrow... not to say today!While more and more lawyers and legal practitioners are getting aware of the growing efficiencyartificial intelligent software provide to a great deal of automated tasks early in their workflow, a fewspecialists storytelling initiatives are finally being heard.Where does that sudden awakening come from? It seems that the recent sanitary crisis is no strangerto this situation.Accelerated by the unprecedented issues COVID-19 has been addressing to many industries, the"intelligent transformation" appears to be more than a mere extension of the digital transformationthe world has seen over the past decade.How is the AI shifting the legal world? How a pandemic has been an unexpected catalyzer forinnovation? What are the main factors behind this evolution and what might be the next step,according the the expert of the field?
COVID-19 AND BACK TO THE FUTURE: WHEN A VIRUS STIMULATES INNOVATIONS"Innovation" is a word that keeps an ontological controversy within its very fabric and interpretationin societies. Where marketing initiatives and especially advertising efforts love to invoke that term,no matter what facts actually tell, experts of the legal world such as Professor Linna Jr. explain thatinnovation must be seen as a commitment to never stop questioning the relevancy of an organizationtoward better results in terms of the use they make of available tools.
About how innovation initiatives must be conductedTo that extent, he proposed an enlightening reading grid for assessing state of the art tech-orientedpractices: the Legal Innovation Index.
As a matter of consequence, the perception of Alpha companies shared by Linna Jr., matching therequirements of the Survival of the Fittest, emphasizes the importance of the commitment anorganization must show in adapting its own structure. To do so, the main point is not to be put,according to the Law scientist, on the endless creativity show but more on the disciplineorganizations have to observe in that commitment.
Digital Transformation: When Latecomers Understand The Survival Of The FittestExamining the landscape of a somewhat heterogeneous legal world, it can be a bit disconcerting atfirst to see what seems to have been achieved in a few months only.Pointed as 5 years technological jump forward, the evolution a great number of legal companies, yetto be digitally transformed, have followed is indeed but an astonishing outcome the Coronavirus hashelped to create.Even for tech-oriented companies, leaders of their own industry, that boost hasbeen noticed: Microsoft was for instance explaining in April 2020 that 2 years worth of progresswere reached in only 2 months. A few legal world watchers such as Professor Linna were thereforeexpecting that the latecomers of the law industry would adjust very quickly... rather than die.
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V I R U S E S A N D T E C H N O L O G I E S : W H E N A I C H A N G E S T H E F A C E O F T H E L E G A L W O R L D
Design infringements web crawlers (like the disruptive DupeKiller software);A document data mining software designed for analyzing, gathering, sorting, organizing andadding value to bits of information in order to automatically turn them into an actual legallybinding products (such as 4Corner, used for now as a sophisticated contract-analysis tool,waiting for its beta-version to be fully approved);Enhanced chatbots helping to fix common legal issues for filtering and redirecting, if necessary,leads and customers toward the most appropriate interlocutor.
A disruption in work/life balance with necessary adjustments organized around a remote workpolicy first" and a wider homeworking framework;An improvement in the tasks and responsibilities given to female workers, helping them to faceless discrimination;A new set of on-boarding practices for new collaborators kick-starting productivity.
From Survivor To Proactive Profiles: Society Major Changes AccelerateHowever, the sanitary crisis appeared to be nothing more than a catalyzer indeed, considering"lawtech" patents, clear signs helping to keep track of technological innovations in the legal world,have started to seriously increase in 2017.Those major changes that have been accelerating recently are actually plenty, and the mostprominent and recent one is the use of digital signatures for sensitive legal acts such as high added-value contracts.
More than that, AI has been helping the legal world to focus on very complex human-oriented taskswhile leaving machine learning algorithms to take care of the contingencies that automated actionsrepresent, such as:
The way societies conduct their "business as usual" policies has also been greatly impacted by thosenew-coming habits and that unveiled tech-potential. Deeper changes have indeed been observed insocial status and relationships, the most surprising ones being:
THE DEATH OF THE EXPERT SYSTEMS: LONG LIVE THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCEIf AI was the center of fantasies in the mid-80's (Terminator, RoboCop, etc.) with only very few actualresults, the ability to leverage a growing pool of data of all sorts conjugated to recent mathematicalrediscoveries led to an endgame situation for the former technologies.The previous expert systems,very limited in terms of efficiency and even practicability have indeed been replaced by machinelearning and data mining based tools.If the word "replace" is the best one to describe that evolution, that is luckily for letting the actuallegal practice experts exalt themselves and focus on the most complex and interesting parts of theirjob.
Technological Disruptions And Dataism: Colonizing Industries One After The OtherCoined by David Brooks in 2013 in his New York Times article, dataism is now, owing to Yuval NoahHarari and his "Homo Deus" essay, an philosophical extension of Trans-humanism paradigm, offeringto see data as the most appropriate way to get bits of reality and, therefore, the starting line to makedecisions.Even if that way of perceiving the day-by-day world is not endorsed by AI users, that is the main ideabehind the "data-driven" decision making process modern companies leaders tell they focus on.The important outcome of this situation? The place humans give themselves into their operativetasks. Multiplying the chatbots for filtering the requests and interactions, legal practitioners canfocus more and more on data interpretation in order to save brain available time for making the mostof the missions they are given. Improving the quality of their results as well as individual satisfaction,legal world workers can express their potential in a much more comfortable way.
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That is, at least, what HMCTS believes in, pledging in 2016 no less than £1.2bn to digitize hearings.Helping to reduce the cost per transaction for the final user of legal products as well as giving thechance to legal practitioners to build passive incomes, the lawtech seem to enable a new marketbalance, helping offer and demand to meet with less compromise.TechNation, having received a great deal of investment on the last few years from the Ministry ofJustice in the UK, expects to double productivity growth with new technological developments of thelegal world.
The Next Step And What It Will Cost: The Legal World On The Edge Of Singularity?The expectations go even further. Not only the market balance is at stake, but the flow of economyand average lifespan of businesses might also be impacted.Knowing that an average business facesabout 8 legal issues every year, a semi-automated set of solutions and an accurate filtering andredirecting system would enable many businesses to remain open. The reason why is a directconsequence of the costs oneself shall spend in a semi-automated legal world. Far from "low-costalternatives", giving a chance to automatize to some extent the most common tasks would help thelawyers to reduce their fees owing to the passive incomes we were talking about earlier.But the question remains: could AI get out of control and lead practitioners to bankruptcy or, moretrivial, to a situation in which the legal system would become so complex that human interventionwould be simply considered as irrelevant?If we were to listen to a few well-known tech-gurus, ironically building their wealth on the very pointthey warn us against, we should stop using AI. Musk, for instance, making an intensive and extensiveuse of artificial intelligence for empowering his Tesla autonomous cars, never ceases to tell howscared we must be of machine learning newly growing efficiency and potential.Actually, where some let nightmares overwhelm their comprehension of what is happening, we mustkeep facts in mind.
Far from a singularity where the term "conscious" would replace the I of AI systems, it is more likelyto see a great number of specialties rising here and there in the close future.For lawyers, for example, who used to be all laws and precedents, an ability to communicate with themachine and adjusting the "diagnosis" (more or less the same way medical doctors nowadays do)submitted by algorithms might be necessary very soon.The cost of it would likely be in an rise in and educational fees, general tuition and specialization, thatshall require more years spent on university benches.But more than cost, that is the job creatingmomentum and, generally speaking, the economical stimulus package that AI is offering to globaleconomy that needs to be considered. From that initiative might emerge a way to reshape the waysocial interactions are conducted, helping money to flow and discrimination to be reduced.Moreover, on a bright note, a brand new field is opening for legal practitioners and theoreticians: AIlaws.
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FIRST THINGS FIRSTYou will now discover our salary guide, a tool that we hope will allow you to position yourself
in terms of competitive remuneration policy as an organization or in terms of situating
yourself amongst your peers as a Talent.
The data presented has been gathered by us through hundreds of telephone and physical
interviews we have conducted with our talents and clients.
However, it is important to take into consideration several aspects when studying this guide!
06
07REASONS SALARIES CAN FLUCTUATE
Junior level from 0 to 3 years of experienceMid-level from 3 to 6 years of experienceSenior level from 6 to 10 years of experienceCounsel* level as from 10 years of experiencePartner* as from 12 years of experience
In Belgium, all Lawyers active in law firms and subscribed to the bar are working as independents and not as employees. In Luxembourg, there is still a possibility to work as employee in law firms.
The figures presented in this document are based on salary information we have collected from our talents and clients in Belgium and Luxembourg during the years 2019 and 2020. Salaries tend to fluctuate upwards every year as a result of recruitments on the market. Whether or not COVID has slowed down or accelerated this process is hard and too early to say.
THE ROLES WE COVERIn this document, we have focused solely on providing data on the remuneration of Lawyers in law firms. The reason for this is that we have found it to be the sector and profession withthe least relevant information on this topic. We have therefore excluded salary information related to other roles we cover in our legal department, such as in-house Lawyers, Compliance Officers and other legal staff members.
Visualization rolesIn order to give a clear overview of the data, we have grouped the Lawyers based on two axes: seniority and expertise.
As far as the seniority, we have used the titles that are commonly used in Law Firms, more specifically:
*It is important to note that the criteria to become Counsel or Partner are slightly different than the usual seniority in terms of years of experience. Law firms usually introduce other elements such as capacity to do business development, bringing own clients to the firm, and other.
STATUS & PACKAGEIn law firms there is a distinction that has to be made between working as an employee or as an independent:
To simplify this salary guide, we have therefore put forward salary information based on the independent status. For employees this means that we have converted their current salary to an independent equivalent, which usually is defined by an average 12.5% (up to 15%) increase to compensatethe social security contributions.
As employees generally receive advantages on top of their remuneration, and independents often do not, we have decided to portray figures related to the gross annual remunerationonly. Advantages such as car allowance, meal vouchers, parking spots, bonuses and others are therefore excluded from these calculations. Finally, the VAT is not included in this guideeither.
08REASONS SALARIES CAN FLUCTUATE
Local Law Firm Specialized boutique Law Firm Benelux Law Firm Big Four Firms Network Firms Elite Firms:
Silver circle Firms Magic circle Law Firms
There are salaries on the market that are quite high in relation to their experience. These are often related to the amount of work (billable and non-billable hours) that is expected by the employer. There are salaries on the market that are quite high in relation to their experience which can often be related to the fact that these professionals have changed jobs more often. It is no secret that negotiating a new contract often means having a bump in salary.
TYPES OF STRUCTUREWe can easily identify different types of Law Firms, in Belgium or Luxembourg.
The main categories we could name are:
In terms of remuneration, there are not many distinctions to be made, except for the trend we notice in the elite firms where the salaries tend to be significantly higher.
PEAKS AND TROUGHS In any sector, there will always be professionals with a salary deviating more than normal from the mean. Unfortunately, it is often these salaries that are held as an example by Talentswhen changing jobs and thus negotiating their salaries. It is important to note that these peaks and troughs are most of the time linked to one of two factors:
Our general advice to Talents is not to base their motivations on these peaks and troughs, but on their professional career and direct environment.
Junior Mid Senior Counsel
SA
LA
RIE
S I
N L
UX
EM
BO
UR
G
09
Corporate
Funds
Litigation
72-90K
Partner
Banking
Labour
Tax
90-115K 115-136K 165-194K >194K
80-102K 102-123K 123-144K 163-202K >202K
60-81K 81-102K 102-123K 152-181K >181K
69-91K 91-113K 113-135K 165-193K >193K
47-69K 91-113K69-91K 142-171K >171K
56-78K 78-100K 100-122K 151-180K >180K
IP/IT 53-75K 75-96K 96-117K 146-175K >175K
Junior Mid Senior Counsel
SA
LA
RIE
S I
N B
EL
GIU
M
10
Corporate
IP/IT
Tax
46.8-63K
Partner
Public
Banking
Labour
63-90K 90-114K >138K
36-54K 54-78K 78-102K >126K
40.2-56.4K 56.4-75K 75-99K 99-126K >126K
43.2-64.8K 64.8-84K 84-104.4K 104.4-127.2K
45-61.2K 87-111.6K61.2-87K 111.6-132K >132K
36-54K 54-78K 78-108K 108-126K >126K
102-126K
114-138K
>127.2K
Head of the Legal
division
F A I S S A LA M E R
V I C T O R I AR E E V E
WHO WE ARE?
Kingsley & Partners is an enthusiastic and devoted team
of career management experts, based in Luxembourg
and Belgium.
We offer tailor-made support in three specific areas:
Wealth Management, Finance and Legal.
Whether you are looking for a talent to join your company
or an expert dedicated to helping you develop your career,
we will scrupulously fulfil the assignment you set us,
supported by our caring, expert and bold stance.
Do not hesistate to get in touch with our team members
with the provided contact details. You can also reach out
to them via LinkedIn.
To view our latest job offers and apply directly, visit the
following address:
https://kingsleyandpartners.com/en/wealth_management
11L E G A L T E A M :
+352 20 88 22 88
Senior
Career Advisor
Luxembourg
+352 20 88 22 88
P A U L I N EJ A C Q U E M I N
Career Advisor
Luxembourg
+352 20 88 22 88
E M M A N U E LV I A T O U R
Career Advisor
Belgium
+32 2 342 03 00
M A L I KG O U R A R A
L A U R E N TE L I A S
R A I C EF E L H O
I S A B E L L A F R A N C O
L A U R AS W Y S E N
THE REST OF THE TEAM 12If you need any guidance regarding your recruitment projects in Finance or Legal, we are here to help you as well.
Do not hesitate to get in touch with our team members:
CEO
+352 20 88 22 88
Managing Partner
Head of Wealth
Management division
+352 20 88 22 88
Senior
Career Advisor
Wealth Management
+32 2 342 03 00
Career Advisor
Finance Luxembourg
+352 20 88 22 88
Kingsley & Partners has
a sister company of career
management experts
operating in the sectors
of Construction, Real Estate
and Special Techniques.
www.dgeconstruction.be
GOOD TO KNOW!
Senior
Career Advisor
Finance Belgium
+352 20 88 22 88
OUR SOURCES 13https://www.ft.com/content/ac054397-eb9a-4198-a050-18961f39feb9
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lawtech-coronavirus-speeds-up-artificial-intelligence-adoption-in-the-legal-profession-mfbk07p0v
https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/how-technology-is-helping-the-uk-to-rewrite-the-narrative-around-access-to-justice/
https://www.sparqa.com/about/https://technation.io/news/tech-nation-to-support-the-growth-of-uk-lawtech/
https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid-19-cybersecurity-fraud-prevention-and-lawtech
https://****@****/nothing-artificial-about-it-how-law-firms-really-use-ai-in-practice-f##-##-##-##-##b6f##-##-##-##-##
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11761-020-00305-x
https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/insights/articles/artificial-intelligence-ai-reporthttps://lawahead.ie.edu/demystifying-and-assessing-ai-for-legal-services-delivery/
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