Fee Structures
Solicitor Hourly Rates 2026: £142 to £579/hr UK Full Table
The Master of the Rolls updated guideline hourly rates in January 2026 (2.28% increase on 2025). These are the benchmark rates used by courts for cost assessments, not a ceiling on what firms actually charge.
The 2026 Guideline Hourly Rates run from £288/hr for a Grade A (8+ years' experience) solicitor in National 2 (the rest of England and Wales) up to £579/hr for a Grade A solicitor in London 1 (heavy commercial work). They took effect on 1 January 2026, a 2.28% uplift on the 2025 rates, and are set by the Master of the Rolls for summary assessment of costs.
These are the court's guideline figures, not a market price list. For what firms themselves put in writing, the published rates in the table below run from £175/hr for a paralegal at a national employment specialist to £1,930/hr at a City of London firm, each read from that firm's own price-transparency page.
Guideline Hourly Rates (GHRs) are set by the Master of the Rolls and reviewed annually. Courts use them as a starting point when assessing costs between parties in litigation. They are a benchmark, not a cap on what firms can charge. Several of the published firm rates further down this page sit above the guideline figure for the same grade and band.
2026 Guideline Hourly Rates: All Regions and Grades
| Region | Grade A | Grade B | Grade C | Grade D |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London 1 | £579/hr | £393/hr | £305/hr | £210/hr |
| London 2 | £422/hr | £327/hr | £276/hr | £157/hr |
| London 3 | £319/hr | £262/hr | £209/hr | £146/hr |
| National 1 | £295/hr | £247/hr | £201/hr | £142/hr |
| National 2 | £288/hr | £247/hr | £200/hr | £142/hr |
Which band covers your city
The band is set by area, and the GOV.UK list is less intuitive than its names suggest. National 1 is often described as the South East; it is not. The same list pulls the core of most large regional cities into National 1 and leaves their outskirts in National 2, so two firms a few miles apart can sit on different guideline rates.
- London 1
- Very heavy commercial and corporate work by centrally based London firms. Not restricted to any particular London postcode: the band is defined by the work, not the address.
- London 2
- City and Central London: EC1 to EC4, W1, WC1, WC2 and SW1.
- London 3
- Outer London, meaning all other London boroughs, plus Dartford and Gravesend.
- National 1
- The counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Essex, Hampshire (and the Isle of Wight), Kent, Middlesex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex and Wiltshire. Plus Birkenhead, Bristol, Liverpool, Watford, Cambridge City, Norwich City, Nottingham City, Birmingham Inner, Cardiff (Inner), Manchester (Central), Leeds (Inner, within 2km of the City Art Gallery) and Newcastle City Centre (within 2km of St Nicholas Cathedral).
- National 2
- Everywhere else in England and Wales, including Birmingham Outer, Cardiff (Outer), Manchester (Outer), Leeds (Outer), Newcastle other than the city centre, Nottinghamshire outside the city, and cities such as Sheffield, Leicester, Coventry, Bradford, Plymouth, Stoke and Wolverhampton.
What Each Grade Means
Solicitor or legal executive with 8+ years post-qualification experience, including time as a senior solicitor. Partners and senior associates.
Solicitor or legal executive with 4+ years post-qualification experience. Mid-level associates.
Newly qualified solicitor or legal executive with under 4 years post-qualification experience. Junior associates.
Trainee solicitor, paralegal, or other fee earner. Not yet qualified. Work is supervised by a qualified solicitor.
Hourly Rates Firms Actually Publish
The guideline rates are a starting point for court cost assessments. What a firm charges is a different number, and for one defined slice of the market it is a public one: the SRA Transparency Rules make a firm that advertises certain consumer services publish its charging basis, including its hourly rates where it bills by the hour. Every rate below was read off the named firm's own price page on 4 October 2026 and is quoted excluding VAT. Each row is one firm's published rate or range, not a market average.
Two things follow from reading the real pages rather than estimating. The first is how wide the band is: the top published London rate is more than eleven times the lowest published paralegal rate, and more than three times the £579 Grade A guideline figure the court would use. The second is how thin the coverage is. The Transparency Rules bite on a defined list of consumer services, so the firms that publish rates are mostly high-street practices and specialists in those areas. Most large commercial firms publish no hourly rate at all, because the work they do sits outside the list. Where that is true, the guideline figure for the band is the only published number available, and anyone quoting a precise City partner rate is estimating.
How to Estimate Your Total Cost
Worked Example: 10-hour piece of work, Grade B, National 1 region
Solicitor Hourly Rates by City
The guideline hourly rate that applies depends on the court band your city falls in. Pick your city for the local Grade A to Grade D benchmark, how the band is decided, and a worked example. Scotland and Northern Ireland use their own fee scales, shown against the comparable English National 2 benchmark.