Letter: Just City rewards?

Sir: When you report that the 102 partners at the City solicitors Slaughter and May earn on average pounds 705,000, I have to question your use of the word "earn" ("City law boom is creating the UK's first pounds 1m a year solicitors", 12 August). They may pay themselves that amount of money, but that might suggest a failure in an effective market mechanism rather than an appropriate reward.

Most of this money presumably comes from fees from public companies.

The bills arrive, and the bills are paid. Perhaps the pension funds and other large shareholders, the only policemen likely to be listened to, should begin to express their unease about the size of fees being demanded.

I read that Britain has one of the greatest inequalities of wealth distribution in the developed world, and though high rewards for entrepreneurial skill may be economically justified it is not simply jealousy that might make one question salaries of this order for what is not obviously wealth-creating for society.

MICHAEL SHOESMITH

Lydbury North,

Shropshire