Bird & Bird hands staff £1,000 each to deal with UK’s cost-of-living crunch
London law firm Bird & Bird is set to pay £1,000 bonuses to more than 300 of its staff to help them deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
The law firm said it will give £1,000 “cost of living allowance” payments to all employees who earn less £50,000 per annum this month, to help them manage rising living costs.
The payments are set to benefit more than 300 of the law firm’s staff, including Bird & Bird’s current cohorts of first- and second-year trainee lawyers, who earn £45,000 in their first year of training and £50,000 in their second.
Bird & Bird said the payments will be paid out in addition to any usual bonus payments or salary hikes.
The cost-of-living bonuses come after Bird & Bird in February gave its newly qualified (NQ) lawyers a 24 per cent pay rise, after upping their salaries from £71,000 to £88,000 a year.
The payments also come after UK law firm Irwin Mitchell in April gave staff £900 each to deal with Britain’s cost of living crunch.
Last month, Lloyds Bank and Rolls-Royce also followed suit in handing out cost-of-living bonuses to their staff.
The Rolls-Royce workers’ trade union later rejected the car makers £2,000 bonus offer as union officials said the one-off payments fell short of the short of the amounts needed to deal with the cost-of-living challenges faced by Rolls-Royce staff.
Bird & Bird’s payment come in the midst of a battle for talent amongst the City’s major firms, that has seen them hike salaries and offer increasingly inventive perks in their efforts to win over employees.