Legal Week noted recently that UK and US legal markets were converging. And with London firms handing out substantial rises for assistants this
year, that process has taken a considerable step forward as the gap between New York and City 'rates' narrows again.

Except, of course, quite a few US law firms are not actually paying US rates anymore. As exclusively revealed last week by legalweek.com, Weil Gotshal & Manges has become the latest US firm to pay its UK lawyers more than those on its home turf, shifting in one step from 'mid-Atlantic' to 'Wall Street-plus'. Other examples include Latham & Watkins and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, which both use off-market conversion rates to mark up their salaries. But is such generosity a sign of strength or weakness? In the case of Latham, which despite trail-blazing global progress is still a good way off reaching the top tier of US profitability, paying such salaries hardly seems a stunning endorsement of its drawing power for City recruits.

Some assistants may choose to see these firms as gallantly offering them 'what they are worth', but these are businesses and they pay what they have to, no more. And worryingly for many American practices, what they have to pay just to hang in there in London is fast rising, as can be seen from the latest round of rises on page 5. This tension will be especially pronounced for national US firms, traditionally among the most committed to UK expansion. This crowd has had to cope with the nationalisation of New York rates in their home market, forcing them to pay Manhattan pay scales in less lucrative regional markets.