Fee-earner grades UK: A, B, C and D explained

Fee-earner grades in the UK are four bands, A to D, used by the courts to set guideline hourly rates when assessing legal costs. Grade A is solicitors and legal executives with over 8 years' experience; grade B, over 4 years; grade C, other solicitors, legal executives and fee-earners of equivalent experience; grade D, trainees, paralegals and other fee-earners.

Those one-line definitions are where most explanations stop. This post goes into what the court's guidance actually says behind them, where firms get the grades wrong, and how to grade a team in a way that would survive a costs hearing. It is part of our series on what a fee-earner is. Nothing here is costs advice: where it matters on a live matter, speak to your costs lawyer or costs draftsman.

Where do the fee-earner grades come from?

From the courts, not from the SRA, the Law Society or CILEX. The grades sit in the Guide to the Summary Assessment of Costs and in the guideline hourly rates table published on GOV.UK. Their original job is narrow. When a judge assesses costs at the end of a hearing, they need a quick reference for what an hour of a given person's time should cost. The grades, combined with a location band, give them one.

The Guide itself describes the guideline rates as "no more than a guide and a starting point" for judges, and says a proper exercise of judicial discretion is still needed in every case. That is worth remembering whenever someone quotes a grade as though it were a fixed entitlement.

Outside the courtroom, the grades have become the profession's common vocabulary for seniority. Recruiters advertise "grade C fee-earner" roles, firms set internal rates by grade, and statements of costs (the Guide asks that they follow Form N260 as closely as possible) list each fee-earner's grade next to their time.

What are grades A, B, C and D?

The current short definitions on GOV.UK are:

• Grade A: solicitors and legal executives with over 8 years' experience.
• Grade B: solicitors and legal executives with over 4 years' experience.
• Grade C: other solicitors or legal executives and fee-earners of equivalent experience.
• Grade D: trainee solicitors, paralegals and other fee-earners.

The longer definitions in the 2021 Guide add detail that the short table leaves out:

• Grade A is solicitors with over eight years' post-qualification experience including at least eight years' litigation experience, and Fellows of CILEX with 8 years' post-qualification experience.
• Grade B is solicitors and Fellows of CILEX with over four years' post-qualification experience, including at least four years' litigation experience.
• Grade C is other solicitors, Fellows of CILEX and fee-earners of equivalent experience.
• Grade D is trainee solicitors, trainee legal executives, paralegals and other fee-earners.

Does post-qualification experience count, or total experience?

Post-qualification experience, and for grades A and B, litigation experience of the same length. This is the detail most often missed. A solicitor who spent six years in property and has been a litigator for three is not, on the Guide's wording, a grade B litigator yet, even though they have been qualified for nine years. Whether someone has "equivalent experience" is, in the Guide's words, ultimately a matter for the discretion of the court.

The practical point: a firm's internal grading can be generous, but the grade on a statement of costs should be the one the firm could defend if the paying party challenged it.

Is a legal executive the same as a solicitor for grading?

For grading purposes, a Fellow of CILEX is graded alongside solicitors with the same experience. The Guide is specific about the title: "legal executive" means a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. People who are not Fellows are not entitled to call themselves legal executives and, in principle, are not entitled to the same hourly rate. Clerks without experience equivalent to a legal executive are treated as grade D.

What grade is a costs lawyer, a paralegal or an employed barrister?

• Qualified costs lawyers are eligible for grade B or C depending on the complexity of the work done, according to the Guide.
• Paralegals are grade D, whatever their seniority inside the firm, unless the court accepts their experience as equivalent to a qualified fee-earner's.
• Employed barristers are allowed at the grade that best reflects the length of their litigation experience.
• Trainees are grade D throughout the training contract.

What grade is a partner?

There is no partner grade. The current definitions do not mention partners at all. In practice most partners are grade A, but the test is experience, not title. A newly made-up partner with six years' qualification would, on the wording, be grade B for costs. Firms that print "Partner, Grade A" on every statement of costs invite a challenge they do not need.

How do the grades affect recoverable costs?

Each grade has a guideline hourly rate in each of five location bands (London 1, London 2, London 3, National 1 and National 2). From 1 January 2026 the GOV.UK table runs, for example, from £142 for grade D outside London to £579 for grade A in London 1. The full table and how firms use it are in guideline hourly rates for fee-earners.

The Guide also expects work to be done at the right level. It says the task of sitting behind counsel at pre-trial hearings should be delegated to a more junior fee-earner in all but the most important hearings, and that being a sole practitioner with nobody to delegate to should not be the deciding factor. In other words, the court looks at who should have done the work, not only who did.

A worked example: grading a small litigation team

A hypothetical team, with invented details, to show how the definitions apply:

• Partner, qualified 14 years, all in litigation. Grade A. No difficulty.
• Senior associate, qualified 7 years: 3 in private client, 4 in litigation. Grade B on the Guide's wording, because the four years of litigation meets the grade B test and the seven years of total PQE does not lift her to A.
• Solicitor, qualified 2 years. Grade C.
• Chartered legal executive, Fellow for 5 years, all in litigation. Grade B.
• Senior paralegal, 10 years in the team, not qualified. Grade D by default. The firm could argue equivalent experience, but should expect to justify it.
• Trainee. Grade D.

The trap in this example is the senior associate. Internally she may be billed at a rate close to the partner's, and her client may have agreed to that. On a costs assessment, the other side will look at the grade, and the difference comes out of the firm's recovery or the client's pocket.

Checklist: grading your team for a statement of costs

• Record each fee-earner's date of qualification and the date they started in contentious work, not just the date they joined.
• Check whether each "legal executive" is a CILEX Fellow.
• For anyone claimed above grade D without qualification, write down why their experience is equivalent before you need to argue it.
• Review grades on each anniversary of qualification, so nobody is claimed a grade early or left a grade late.
• Look at who did the work, not only who is on the team. The Guide expects senior time on junior tasks to be questioned.

What mistakes do firms make with grades?

Four are easy to fall into, and each is avoidable:

• Grading by job title. "Associate" and "senior associate" are the firm's titles. The court grades by qualification and experience, so a title-based grade is an assertion waiting to be tested.
• Counting total PQE instead of relevant PQE. For grades A and B, the Guide asks for litigation experience of the same length. A lateral move from a non-contentious team resets more than people expect.
• Calling non-Fellows legal executives. The title belongs to CILEX Fellows. Using it loosely on a statement of costs invites a reduction to grade D.
• Senior time on junior tasks. Even a correctly graded partner can have time reduced if the work was the kind a junior should have done. Grade answers "what rate", not "was this the right person".

None of these is exotic. They come from grading being done once, at hire, and never revisited. A short annual check, alongside the checklist above, is usually enough.

Why do grades matter outside litigation?

Many non-contentious firms never go near a costs assessment, yet still use grades. They use them as a structure for pay, for internal charge-out rates and for the SRA's price transparency requirement, which for certain services asks firms to publish the experience and qualifications of anyone carrying out the work and of their supervisors. Grades are a convenient shorthand for that, but the rule asks for experience and qualifications, not a letter.

Grades also shape how a firm thinks about capacity. A grade A hour is the most expensive hour the firm has. Spending it on routine client status calls, or on taking a new enquiry's details, is a cost the grade table makes easy to see. We cover measuring that in fee-earner utilisation, and the difference between paralegals, solicitors and other fee-earners in fee-earner vs paralegal vs solicitor.

How do you move up a grade?

For costs purposes, by gaining post-qualification experience in the relevant work. Inside a firm, grading tends to be tied to qualification date and role, and promotion to associate or senior associate does not in itself change a court grade. Paralegals who want to move from grade D usually do it by qualifying, whether through the SQE route to solicitor or through CILEX.

Where does WasilX fit?

Not in grading. We do not assess costs or set rates. What we do is keep low-value interruptions off expensive grades. Cam, our AI Engagement Coordinator, takes calls on the firm's line, asks the firm's qualifying questions and books the call back, and each fee-earner's personal assistant covers their calls in court and drafts matter updates for the fee-earner to approve. If you want to see how that would work for your team, let's talk. For a firm-level view of where time and money go, see law firm cost structure.

Frequently asked questions

What is a grade A fee-earner? A solicitor or chartered legal executive with over 8 years' experience. The 2021 Guide to the Summary Assessment of Costs adds that for solicitors this means over eight years' post-qualification experience including at least eight years of litigation experience.

What is a grade C fee-earner? Other solicitors or legal executives, and fee-earners of equivalent experience. In practice this covers most solicitors with under four years' relevant post-qualification experience.

What grade is a paralegal? Grade D, alongside trainee solicitors and other fee-earners, unless a court accepts that the paralegal's experience is equivalent to a qualified fee-earner's.

What grade is a trainee solicitor? Grade D for the whole of the training contract.

Are fee-earner grades set by the SRA? No. They come from the courts, in the Guide to the Summary Assessment of Costs and the guideline hourly rates on GOV.UK. The SRA does not set grades.