Aspiring lawyers are now being offered as much as £60,000 a year, almost the same as an MP’s salary, before they even qualify.

The sum is being paid by one of the “magic circle” sets of commercial barristers’ chambers in London. It is at least £15,000 more a year than its nearest rivals pay. The chambers, One Essex Court in the Temple, has just made four offers to students of £60,000 a year for their two-year training period starting in October next year, compared with the £45,000 that it offered this year.

The students are likely to be aged 23 or 24 and will have completed a degree and the one-year Bar vocational training course. Anyone who does not have a law degree will have had to complete an extra year on a graduate law diploma course.

Darren Burrows, senior clerk at the chambers, which is headed by Lord Grabiner, QC, a Labour peer, said: “We have been extremely successful in recruiting many of the best individuals coming to commercial Bar, year on year, for some time now. Our clients understand the selection process here and that knowledge gives them considerable reassurance when selecting counsel from within our ranks.”

As well as enhancing its reputation as a pre-eminent commercial set, the chambers wanted to ensure that “our pupillage award recognises the very high quality of potential applicants”, he said.

“We already attract the very best and you could say — ‘so why increase the award?’ We feel that this will ensure that our awards remain at the top end and that they reflect the very high quality of people we recruit. It is a very small investment when you consider what they will be capable of earning in future years.”

The £60,000 offer to trainees, or pupils as they are called, far outstrips the pay offered to pupils by other commercial chambers: Fountain Court is offering £40,000, as is 39 Essex Street, and Brick Court Chambers is offering £42,000.

Even the top corporate law firms are paying their trainee solicitors less than this, ranging from about £30,000 a year to nearly £40,000. Freshfields, one of the top five corporate law firms, pays its trainees £39,000.

On qualifying, starting salaries can be almost double these figures, with many law firms paying more than £60,000 and American law firms based in London even more: Debevoise & Plimpton pays £82,000 a year to its newly qualified lawyers.

The minimum salary for trainees in law firms is now £18,590 and outside London £16,650, the Law Society says. Small firms, especially those doing legal aid, will have to pay this sum and many will struggle to find even that.

A spokesman for the Law Society said that the average salary for a trainee solicitor across all regions in England and Wales was £23,865. Male trainees were paid, on average, 8 per cent more than women.

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