Legal support market update – Yorkshire and the North East

Legal support market update

As specialists in the legal support sector, we place roles in this area across the entire UK and have a strong presence in Yorkshire. Our team of specialists work closely with legal firms and professionals in the region and have great insight into the state of play in the market.
Although there are many job titles that fall within the umbrella of legal support, such as ‘legal administrator’ and ‘office assistant’ our focus for this update falls on two of the most common job roles in this area; legal secretaries and legal PAs. These two job titles cover the large majority of similar roles and give us a reliable overview of the state of the market.
The insights here pertain primarily to the Yorkshire and the Humber and cover all of the major hubs in the area. However, they do provide an applicable benchmark to most other regions in the legal support market.

Legal secretaries

Legal secretaries play a fundamental role in supporting fee earners and the wider team to ensure efficiency. As a result of the nuances within this business support role, the legal secretarial market is without a doubt a candidate driven market. It is often quite difficult to find available candidates that tick all the boxes that you may be looking for. This is particularly the case with certain legal disciplines.
Salaries typically vary from £16,000 - £26,000 dependent on location, experience and firm. City centre firms in major cities like Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham will tend to pay significantly more that smaller hubs such as York or Harrogate. City centre firms will tend to pay £20,000 - £24,000 for experienced legal secretaries. Salaries for secretaries within specialist disciplines, such as IP, will be more than non-specialists. If you want to check your salary in the legal support industry, please use our salary comparison and benchmark tool.
There are often several firms recruiting these roles at any one time and often in similar locations – this makes the salary on offer, as well as the firm, package and role, a key differentiator for candidates. Firms are now creating solutions to tackle the candidate shortage and implementing training and support for highly promising junior candidates, hoping to promote internally more often than not. Other benefits such as holidays, insurance, bonus schemes are also being used to bolster offers. All of this means that the salaries on offer for legal secretary roles has been creeping up and will continue to do so.

Legal PAs

We are seeing the number of legal PA roles coming to market increase in the Yorkshire region, and across much of the UK. Despite the fine line between the role of legal secretary and legal PA, the legal PA role is becoming more common as it allows firms to give additional responsibilities to high calibre candidates, thus justifying a higher salary.
Salaries for this type of role can vary from £22,000 - £28,000 presently, dependent on location, experience and firm. Similar to the case of the legal secretary, legal PAs who work in major cities can expect to earn the higher end of this range. An increasing number of firms are employing legal PAs to support partners and high fee earners with the role requiring a higher level of experience than the more general secretary function. This higher level of responsibility is the factor which determines the higher average salary in the role.
Competent legal secretaries can view the role of the legal PA as a step up and as a chance to take on more responsibility. This type of role can often attract PAs from other business functions, who may not have wide legal experience but can bring a deep understanding of this type of support role. The legal side of the role can be picked up by competent candidates.

Key recommendations for recruiting these roles

Legal support candidates play a fundamental role in providing relative areas of the business with effective support that enables them to carry out the roles that they are paid for. Consequently, it is important for a firm to attract the high quality candidates so that they are on a similar page to the individual they are supporting.
  • There needs to be flexibility when it comes to salaries and package offers for legal support staff – the wide deviation of salaries across Yorkshire indicate the varying calibre of candidates across the landscape. Be prepared to offer the right package to your preferred candidate
  • Secretarial team leader positions would provide a great opportunity for those who want to gain supervisory and management experience, whilst also providing an effective infrastructure for the legal support function. This role can be introduced to attract candidates who want management/supervisory experience.
  • Legal PA roles should also be introduced, particularly to support partners and senior fee earners. The legal PA role will be able to provide legal secretaries with another path to progression within the organisation and their business support career. This legal PA path will be more in line with what a lot of business support candidates are looking for than the secretarial team leader.
  • Recruiting high calibre junior level candidates and then training them up to develop into good legal secretaries is a long term but effective method of moulding good support staff.
If you would like to discuss any of this in further detail or to speak about recruiting legal support staff in the Yorkshire region please contact Naeem Shabir, Associate Consultant at Page Personnel Legal.
T: +441133889042