It may come as a surprise to a few of our younger readers, but there is legal life outside the capital. Whilst the very largest deals and biggest salaries remain the preserve of the Magic Circle and the City's increasing horde of US firms, there is also a very healthy living and excellent quality of work to be found outside EC1. Increasingly, high profile corporate transactions, the larger commercial deals and more complex property developments are being farmed out by cost conscious blue chip companies to the bigger regional and national law firms; recognising the latter's increasing sophistication and capacity to deal with this type of work.

Like the quality of work, salaries outside London are also rising. Firms recognise that in order to attract (and just as important retain) the top level lawyers required to carry out this deluge of instructions, they need to pay commensurately. As a result, last year saw newly qualified salaries in many regional practices break through the £30,000 barrier for the first time and it is not unheard of for equity partners in the likes of Wragges, Walker Morris, Eversheds, DLA and Pinsent Curtis to draw upwards of £400,000 a year. Admittedly not the headline grabbing sums linked to some London practices which elicit gasps of surprise amongst young lawyers and of concern amongst paying clients, but nonetheless, not a bad living.

The concentration of financial institutions and blue chip HQ's will always mean that the very largest deals and most eye-popping pay reviews will tend to gravitate to London, but this is sometimes at a cost. High salaries have to be financed by some means and often this is done by imposing high chargeable hours targets on fee earners; sometimes in excess of 1800 hours per annum. This compares with targets of 1200-1300 hours as is commonplace in many of the major regional practices. It's all very well earning huge sums of money but it's also nice to have spare time in which to spend those hard earned bank balances. Cynics argue that regional firms' insistence that they offer a better quality of life is simply a euphemism for the fact that they do not pay as well as their London competitors. Others would say there is some substance to the cliché.

As one would expect, house prices are also lower outside the capital. Exorbitant property prices in London consign many junior solicitors and barristers to years of rented accommodation until they are able to save the substantial deposits required to make a first step onto the property ladder. In contrast, the regional pound buys a lot more bricks, mortar and surrounding land - again another lifestyle issue.

This piece is not intended as an exhaustive review of opportunities in the regions, nor is it going to portray a provincial solicitor's working life as a 9 to 5 bed of utopian roses. Work-related stress, long working hours and traffic congestion still blight the lives of lawyers in the regions as they do in London but are perhaps a less frequent occurrence than is the case with their City counterparts. The intention is simply to give a flavour for regional life and to give an overview of some of the principal players in the legal market in the main commercial centres outside London.

Life outside of London is not for everyone. Many people thrive on the hustle and bustle of life in the first city; the eye-catching nature of the transactional work, the sky high salaries, the proximity of so many top class restaurants and cultural opportunities. But these are not exclusive to London. True, they may exist in greater concentration than in Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol and the like but they're still there. In the final analysis, people most likely to look for a move from London to the regions are those who have a pre-existing tie to those particular localities be it through friends, family or historic university links.

What they should take comfort from is that the regions are able to offer the whole spectrum of legal opportunities from small high street general practices to well regarded, major commercial firms offering high quality work and competitive salaries. Whatever it is you are looking for, a suitable opportunity should exist, in one of the other commercial centres in England and Wales. You may not become an overnight millionaire but then again you may enjoy a better overall quality of life.

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