What does it cost to hire a legal secretary in the UK?

An employer pays about £30,885 a year for a full-time legal secretary on the median salary, once employer National Insurance and the minimum pension are added, and about £32,885 in the first year with recruitment. ONS figures for 2025 put the full-time median salary at £26,968, with the middle half earning between £24,242 and £31,660. On top of the salary the employer pays National Insurance at 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year, a pension contribution of at least 3% of qualifying earnings and 5.6 weeks of paid holiday.

How much is a legal secretary paid?

The Office for National Statistics publishes a figure for legal secretaries as a group of their own: unit group 4212, which also covers legal administrators and legal clerks. In the 2025 survey (table 14.7a, provisional, released 23 October 2025) the full-time median is £26,968 and the lower and upper quartiles are £24,242 and £31,660 (the upper figure is the less reliable of the two; the group is small). The National Careers Service, a GOV.UK service, gives a wider range, £24,000 for a starter to £40,000 with experience. The ONS median is the fairest single figure to budget on.

What does an employer pay on top of the salary?

• Employer National Insurance. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year the employer pays 15% of each employee's earnings above the secondary threshold of £5,000 a year. On the median salary that is £3,295. A firm with a small total National Insurance bill can set the Employment Allowance of £10,500 against it; a larger firm pays the full amount.

• Pension. Under automatic enrolment the employer pays at least 3% of qualifying earnings, the band between £6,240 and £50,270 a year. On the median salary that is £622 a year.

• Holiday. Almost every worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, 28 days for someone working five days a week, and the employer may count bank holidays within it. It is not a payment, but it is 28 days when the desk is empty.

• Recruitment. The CIPD's Resourcing and talent planning report 2026 gives a median cost per hire of £2,000 for employees below senior management, counting in-house time, advertising, agency fees and onboarding. It is a survey median from a small sample, 223 employers whose estimates were accurate to within 20%, and it counts firms that paid an agency and firms that did not.

Salary, employer National Insurance and the minimum pension come to £30,885 a year on the median. With the CIPD's recruitment cost the first year is £32,885, before the notice period, the handover, the sick days and the hours a fee earner spends showing the new person how the firm likes its letters.

Can AI do part of a legal secretary's job?

The National Careers Service lists the day: drafting and checking documents from solicitors' notes and dictation, preparing court forms, responding to client enquiries, making appointments and managing diaries, filing documents, and handling billing and invoices. Some of that only a person can do. Some of it is the same sequence on every matter, and that part grows each time the firm takes on more work.

An AI worker is given a written job, a named person who approves its work and a monthly review. In a law firm the jobs it can be given are the repeated ones:

• Taking a new enquiry's details, listing every party for the conflict search and drafting the client care letter from the firm's precedent: matter intake and engagement letters.

• Sorting the general inbox, so that enquiries go to intake and emails on open matters reach the right fee earner with a summary: enquiry and inbox triage.

• Booking client meetings and appointments to sign documents against the fee earners' calendars and sending the confirmations: diary and scheduling.

• Reminding clients of unpaid bills on the schedule the firm sets and logging each reply: invoice and payment chasing.

• Chasing the signed client care letter, the ID evidence and missing documents, and showing what each file still waits for: chasing clients for documents.

What stays with a person?

• The phone, which a person answers.

• Anything filed at court. The agent can prepare a form from the file, but a person checks and sends it.

• Dictation that becomes a will or a contract. The drafting judgement is the fee earner's and the checking is a trained secretary's.

• Client money. The agent has no access to the client account.

• Whether there is a conflict and whether to act, which under the Code of Conduct of the SRA, the regulator of solicitors in England and Wales, are a solicitor's; and the terms, which are the fee earner's.

And the relationship stays with a person: the secretary who has worked with a partner for twelve years knows what the partner means before it is said.

Should you hire a legal secretary, or split the job?

Write the job down before you advertise it, as a list of tasks and how often each happens. If most of the list is chasing, booking, sorting and reminding, that is the part that will keep growing and the part an AI worker can take on, leaving the person you hire, or keep, the documents and the fee earners. If most of it is dictation, court forms and the phone, hire the secretary. Often it is both. AI staff compared with hiring an administrator sets the two side by side, and the same sum is worked for an administrator, for a paralegal and, for any hire, in what it costs to employ someone in the UK. The wider case is in how to scale a business without hiring more staff, and what an AI worker is in our explainer on AI staff. Our starting price is on the homepage.

In a law firm an AI worker would take the chasing and the inbox on the secretary's desk, as a job agreed with you, leaving the phone, the documents and the fee earners to a person. A new secretary's first months can go on the same chasing and the same inbox. Talk to our agent.