Fee Structures
Solicitor Hourly Rates 2026: Calculator + What 1,304 Firms Charge
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 calculator
The 2026 rates, effective 1 January 2026 (judiciary.uk). The court's starting point for costs between parties, not a cap on what a firm may charge you. Read 15 October 2026.
At the 2026 guideline rate
| Grade B, National 2 | £247/hr |
| 10 hours | £2,470 |
| VAT at 20% | £494 |
| Total | £2,964 |
| Same work at 2025 rates £2,904 · 2024 rates £2,796 | |
All places not included in London 1 to 3 and National 1. Grade B: Solicitors and Fellows of CILEX with over four years post qualification experience including at least four years litigation experience. Sources: judiciary.uk Guideline hourly rates 2026 (1 January 2026); GOV.UK A to Z of areas; Guide to the Summary Assessment of Costs 2021, Appendix 2.
Compare with your quote
| Guideline for this grade and area | £247 |
Enter the hourly rate from your client care letter. SRA Code of Conduct 8.7 requires the best possible information about how your matter will be priced, at the start and as it progresses.
| Firms in National 2 publish, all grades 723 firms | £195 to £300/hr |
Middle half of 2316 hourly rates read from 723 firms' own price pages (head office in this band), data read 20 October 2026; median £250. Most firms state the rate excluding VAT. Grade is explicit on few pages, so this is all grades together. For context: the top 10 UK firms averaged £496 an hour across all fee earners in 2025 (PwC), and SME firms realised a median £133 per fee-earner hour in 2024 (Law Society FBS 2025).
Indicative only. The guideline figures are the court's broad approximations for assessing costs between parties (Guide to the Summary Assessment of Costs, para 27); what a firm charges its own client is set by the retainer. Scotland and Northern Ireland are outside the guideline rates. We are not a law firm.
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
Solicitors with over eight years' post-qualification experience including at least eight years' litigation experience, and Fellows of CILEX with eight years' post-qualification experience. In practice, partners and senior solicitors.
Solicitors and Fellows of CILEX with over four years' post-qualification experience including at least four years' litigation experience.
Other solicitors and Fellows of CILEX, and fee earners of equivalent experience. Qualified Costs Lawyers are allowed at Grade B or C depending on the work.
Trainee solicitors, trainee legal executives, paralegals and other fee earners. Clerks without equivalent experience are treated as this grade.
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 hours of work, Grade B, National 1 band, 2026 rates
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.