Remuneration and working hours for legal employees: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for:

A) Please can you share with me what your solicitors/senior solicitors/Head of legal etc are paid.
B) The hours they work and
C) When they receive pay increases.

Response

I have answered each of your questions below:

A) We do not have a specialist salary scale for Solicitors in the Scottish Government. All qualified Solicitors roles are grade C band and above. The salary information for this is available here -Competitive salary, pension and benefits - Work For Scotland (work-for-scotland.org).

There are also Solicitor roles at a Senior Civil Servant (SCS) level. Pay and terms and conditions for SCS grades are reserved to the UK Government and are managed by Cabinet Office. The current UK pay ranges applying to each SCS grade can be found at the following link: Practitioner Guidance on the 2023/24 Senior Civil Service Pay Framework (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

B) A full-time employee is contracted to 37 hours per week. As part of the current pay award it was agreed that this will reduce 35 hours from 1 October 2024.

C) The pay review date is 1 April. Pay increases are generally effective from the pay review date, but other arrangements may be agreed as part of the terms of a pay award.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.