Long hours and demanding workloads have long been associated with a career in law. While attitudes towards work/life balance and wellbeing are changing, are firms doing enough to tackle the pressures their people face, and could better recruitment planning be part of the solution?

The legal profession has never been known for its nine-to-five culture. Tight deadlines, demanding clients and periods of intense workloads have long been part of the job, particularly in practice areas where activity can fluctuate significantly.

Of course, much has changed.

More firms now offer flexible working, conversations about mental health are increasingly open, and many employers have taken positive steps to support their people. Yet have these developments led to meaningful changes in workloads and the expectations placed upon legal professionals?

World Mental Health Day on 10 October provided another opportunity to revisit this issue. While awareness and access to support are undoubtedly important, the conversation also needs to consider what is happening during the working day itself.

When longer hours and consistently heavy caseloads become the norm, the consequences extend beyond individual wellbeing. They can also affect recruitment, retention and the longer-term sustainability of legal teams.

For employers, the challenge is not simply recognising when people are struggling. It is understanding what can be done to prevent workloads from reaching that point in the first place.

What the latest LawCare research tells us

In September 2026, legal mental health charity LawCare reflected on the findings of its Life in the Law 2025 research, one year after the report’s publication.

The findings remain concerning. Some 59.1% of respondents reported poor mental wellbeing, while 43.4% said their mental health and wellbeing were very significantly influenced by work.

Perhaps most strikingly, 78.7% reported working beyond their contracted hours, with 8.5% estimating that they worked an additional 21 hours or more each week.

The research also highlighted potential implications for retention. More than half of respondents, 56.2%, could see themselves leaving their current workplace within five years, while 32.1% could see themselves leaving the legal sector altogether within the same period.

It is worth saying that these figures reflect the experiences of those who participated in LawCare’s research, rather than the legal profession as a whole. Nevertheless, they raise important questions about the sustainability of working practices within the sector.

Among LawCare’s recommendations were the need to actively manage workloads, prioritise effective people management, embed flexible working options and evaluate the impact of wellbeing support.

Introducing another employee benefit alone cannot address these challenges. Firms also need to consider how they allocate work, measure performance and resource their teams to meet expectations.

The challenge of the ever-growing caseload

There is an important distinction between a busy legal department and an overstretched one.

A healthy flow of work is naturally desirable for law firms, but pressure can begin to build when new instructions continue to arrive without a corresponding review of capacity.

For fee earners, this may mean managing additional files alongside existing cases, responding to increasingly demanding client expectations or finding that administrative responsibilities consume more of the working day.

In some departments, the challenge is particularly difficult because workloads do not necessarily follow a predictable pattern.

Residential conveyancing is an obvious example. Mortgage rates, affordability, economic confidence and the wider housing market all influence activity. Demand can change considerably over relatively short periods. This leaves firms balancing sufficient capacity against the need to control staffing costs.

When property market conditions change, workloads can follow

Rightmove’s September 2026 figures illustrate how quickly market activity can change. Buyer demand increased by 5% during the opening week of September, compared with an average increase of just 0.4% over the equivalent period during the previous five years.

However, this seasonal improvement came against a more uncertain market backdrop. In its revised September 2026 forecast, Rightmove suggested that average UK asking prices could fall by up to 2% by the end of the year.

Of course, an increase in buyer enquiries does not necessarily lead to an immediate rise in conveyancing instructions. Nevertheless, these figures demonstrate how quickly sentiment and activity can shift. For firms trying to anticipate future workloads, that uncertainty presents a challenge.

Commercial property teams face their own variations in demand as investment confidence, development activity and wider business decisions influence transactional work.

Other practice areas experience similar pressures. Corporate teams can face concentrated periods of deal activity, employment lawyers may see changes in demand as economic conditions shift, while litigation departments must manage the uncertainty of case progression and court timetables.

The question, therefore, is not whether demand will fluctuate, but how firms prepare their people and their recruitment strategies to manage those fluctuations.

The recruitment dilemma: Hire now or wait for greater certainty?

This is where workforce planning becomes particularly important.

For a conveyancing firm emerging from a quieter period, hiring additional staff may feel like a considerable commitment. After all, there is no guarantee that increased activity will continue.

There is a perfectly understandable commercial argument for caution. Recruiting permanent employees carries a cost, and firms need confidence that projected workloads can support additional headcount.

However, the opposite approach carries risks of its own.

If firms wait until every desk is full and existing employees are consistently working beyond their contracted hours, they may find themselves recruiting under considerable pressure.

Firms cannot always find experienced candidates immediately, and recruitment processes take time. New starters will also generally need an induction period before they can contribute at full capacity.

In the meantime, firms may expect existing team members to absorb additional instructions and manage heavier workloads, while maintaining the same standards of client service.

The difficulty is that these employees may begin reconsidering their own career options if the pressure becomes unsustainable.

Making recruitment part of the wider plan

There is no universal solution, and hiring ahead of demand will not be appropriate for every business. However, there is value in regularly reviewing caseloads, assessing the distribution of work across departments and considering how teams could respond to changes in activity.

This might involve developing junior colleagues, strengthening administrative support, reviewing how responsibilities are allocated or considering temporary resourcing arrangements where appropriate.

It is also worth asking whether every pressure point genuinely requires another qualified fee earner, or whether other changes could help alleviate the workload.

The objective should be to make recruitment decisions as part of an ongoing workforce strategy, rather than treating hiring solely as a response to someone leaving or a department reaching capacity.

Flexible working: Greater freedom or longer working days?

Flexible and hybrid working have become important considerations for many legal professionals seeking a better balance between their careers and personal commitments.

However, greater flexibility can also present a challenge when boundaries around working hours become less defined.

Without the traditional separation between office and home, it can be easier for the working day to extend into the evening. Answering an email after dinner, reviewing a file before breakfast or remaining available outside contracted hours can gradually become part of someone’s routine.

There is nothing inherently problematic about choosing to work different hours, particularly when those arrangements genuinely suit an individual’s circumstances.

The concern arises when flexibility becomes another way of accommodating excessive workloads rather than a means of improving work/life balance.

If employees are consistently working longer hours simply to keep on top of their caseloads, the ability to work from home does not necessarily resolve the underlying problem.

This is particularly relevant in a profession where deadlines, client demands and the pressure to keep matters progressing can make it difficult to switch off.

Firms therefore need to consider not only whether they offer flexible arrangements, but how those arrangements operate in practice.

Are expectations around availability clear? Do managers recognise when employees are routinely working beyond their agreed hours? Is the volume of work achievable within the time allocated?

Flexibility can offer considerable benefits, but it should not create an expectation that employees remain available beyond their contracted hours.

What does Clayton Legal’s Salary Survey tell us?

Our own 2026/27 Salary Survey and Market Insights Report provides further insight into the importance of working conditions and the factors influencing career decisions.

When we asked legal professionals who were unlikely to consider moving roles what was keeping them with their current employer, 64% identified good work/life balance.

Working arrangements, including home, flexible and hybrid working, were selected by 56%, while 48% highlighted culture and the working environment.

By comparison, 14% selected their firm’s benefits package.

We also saw an increase in the proportion of respondents citing better work/life balance as their reason for leaving a previous role, rising from 12.6% in the previous survey to 17.5%.

These findings do not suggest that benefits are unimportant. Nor do they measure how effective employers’ wellbeing services are. Instead, they highlight how much the everyday experience of work can influence an employee’s decision to stay

For employers, that distinction is worth considering.

Offering private healthcare, employee assistance programmes, counselling services or other wellbeing benefits can provide valuable support, particularly when employees understand what is available and how to access it confidentially.

However, those benefits cannot necessarily compensate for consistently unrealistic workloads, poor communication or a culture in which employees feel unable to raise concerns.

A meaningful commitment to wellbeing requires both appropriate support when people need it and working practices that help reduce avoidable pressure.

Moving beyond awareness to meaningful support

One of the positive developments across the legal profession is the growing willingness to discuss mental health openly.

In its World Mental Health Day message for 2026, LawCare highlighted the importance of making support accessible in ways that work for different individuals.

Its free, confidential services include a helpline, email support and live online chat, providing an independent source of emotional support for people working across the legal sector.

For law firms, ensuring that employees are aware of independent services such as these is an important starting point.

There is also an opportunity for employers to examine the support available internally. Regular conversations about workload, effective line management, confidential access to professional assistance and a willingness to make practical adjustments can all contribute to a more supportive working environment.

Crucially, employees need to feel confident that raising a concern about stress or workload will be met constructively.

It can be difficult to build that confidence if the wider culture continues to reward excessive hours or treats constantly being busy as evidence of commitment.

There is also a wider consideration for firms reviewing their employee benefits. Is wellbeing support clearly communicated during recruitment and induction? Do employees know how to access it? Is there a genuine commitment to encouraging its use, rather than simply including it within the overall benefits package?

These practical questions can help firms assess whether their commitment to wellbeing translates into a better everyday experience for employees.

Supporting mental health should not be confined to an awareness campaign or an annual event. It needs to be reflected in everyday management decisions and the expectations placed upon employees throughout the year.

Looking ahead: Building teams that can sustain demand

As law firms begin considering their priorities for 2027, there is an opportunity to look beyond immediate recruitment requirements and consider the longer-term resilience of their teams.

That means reviewing whether workloads are sustainable, identifying where additional support may be needed and recognising the potential impact of changing market conditions before they place further pressure on existing employees.

It also means listening to the people already within the business.

Recruitment and retention are closely connected, particularly when employees are making career decisions based on the quality of their working lives rather than remuneration alone.

External market conditions can significantly influence instructions and workloads in areas such as residential conveyancing. Finding the right balance between commercial caution and investment in people will therefore remain particularly important.

There will always be fluctuations in demand, and not every period of increased activity can justify additional permanent headcount. Nevertheless, consistently relying on employees to absorb those fluctuations may create longer-term recruitment and retention challenges of its own.

Ultimately, a commitment to wellbeing should be evident not only in the support firms offer, but in how they plan, recruit and manage their people.

About Clayton Legal

At Clayton Legal, we work with law firms and legal professionals across the property sector, giving us insight into the challenges employers face when balancing recruitment, changing workloads and the need to retain experienced talent.

Whether you’re reviewing the capacity of your existing team, planning ahead for 2027 or considering your own career options, contact me for a confidential conversation about how I can help.

Further support: Anyone working in the legal sector who would like confidential emotional support can contact LawCare on 0800 279 6888 or by email at support@lawcare.org.uk. Its helpline, email and live chat support are available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

Flexible working remains an important part of the conversation around attraction and retention in the legal sector.

In our recent blog, Is Offering Flexibility Your Biggest Flex Heading Into 2027?, we looked at the role flexibility can play when firms are competing for talent. Our latest Salary Survey & Market Report also shows that flexibility continues to form part of the wider package legal professionals are considering alongside salary, progression, benefits and quality of work.

But a recent poll we ran on LinkedIn raised a slightly different question.

We asked whether greater flexibility can negatively affect how somebody is perceived at work. Of the 49 people who responded, 44% said that unfortunately it can, while 36% felt performance should be the key consideration. A further 14% said it depends on the role or firm, and 4% had experienced this themselves.

The numbers are based on a relatively small poll, so they are not intended to represent the whole legal profession. What was particularly interesting, however, was the discussion they generated.

Flexibility means different things to different people

One of the clearest themes from the responses was that flexibility is not simply about working from home.

For one person, it had meant asking to change a shift by an hour because public transport did not run late enough. Others spoke about part-time working after maternity leave, caring responsibilities, disability and the ability to work remotely because of a partner’s military posting.

For firms, that is a useful reminder that a conversation about flexibility can cover a wide range of working arrangements. Part-time hours, adjusted start and finish times, compressed hours, hybrid working and remote working can all form part of it.

There will, of course, be roles where particular hours or levels of office presence are genuinely important. The key is clarity around what the role requires and where there may be room to adapt.

Performance versus presence

Another recurring theme was the relationship between visibility and performance.

Some respondents felt that working fewer days or spending less time in the office could affect how an employee’s commitment was perceived, even where their results remained strong.

That does not mean office attendance is irrelevant. Legal work can depend heavily on collaboration, supervision, client contact and learning from colleagues. But it does raise a useful question for firms with flexible arrangements in place: how is performance actually being assessed?

If expectations are clear and somebody is delivering against them, firms may want to consider whether physical presence is carrying more weight than intended.

This becomes particularly important when decisions are being made around progression, development opportunities and the allocation of higher-profile work.

Flexibility should not automatically mean lower ambition

A number of the comments also focused on the assumption that somebody asking for greater flexibility may be less ambitious or less interested in progression.

That is clearly not always the case.

People’s circumstances change throughout a career. Parenthood, caring responsibilities, health, location and personal commitments can all influence how somebody needs to work without changing what they want to achieve professionally.

For employers, there is a valuable distinction to make between how somebody works and what they are capable of contributing.

As recruiters, we speak to candidates about far more than salary expectations alone. Progression, management, flexibility, commute, culture and the quality of the work all form part of decisions about whether somebody stays with a firm or considers moving.

Flexibility can (and does) open up the talent pool

Not all of the feedback focused on potential drawbacks.

One employer told us that remote working had been a “game changer” for their business because it enabled them to employ military spouses who may be based in different parts of the UK or overseas.

That is perhaps one of the most useful points for firms to consider from a recruitment perspective.

The more tightly a role is defined by location or traditional working patterns, the smaller the potential candidate pool can become. Where a firm can offer genuine flexibility, it may create access to experienced people who would otherwise have ruled the opportunity out before the recruitment process had even started.

This will not work for every role or every firm, granted, but it is worth considering whether working arrangements are being shaped by the genuine needs of the position or simply by the way the role has always been done.

A useful sense check for firms

Flexible working does not need to mean lowering expectations, and nor does every request have to be workable.

The strongest arrangements are likely to be those where both sides understand what is expected, where performance remains central and where the flexibility being discussed during recruitment reflects the reality once somebody joins.

For firms heading into 2027, it may therefore be worth looking beyond the wording of a flexible-working policy and considering how it operates in practice.

• Are people working different patterns still able to access development opportunities?
• Are managers clear about how performance is measured?
• Is the flexibility described to candidates genuinely available within the team they are joining?
• And could a little more flexibility widen the pool of people your firm is able to recruit?

Those are useful questions whether your firm is hiring now or simply starting to think about its plans for the year ahead.

At Clayton Legal, we work with law firms and legal professionals across the UK, giving us insight into both the priorities shaping candidate decisions and the practical challenges firms face when recruiting. Our role is not to prescribe one way of working, but to help firms understand the market and build a proposition that works for their business and the people they want to attract.

If you would like to discuss what candidates in your region or practice area are currently looking for, get in touch for a confidential, no-pressure chat.

Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere, right?

Depending on the headline, it is either about to transform working life or bring huge parts of it to an end (or, indeed worse depending on which media you consume!).

But in the legal sector, the conversation is becoming rather more practical. Recent reporting from the Financial Times has focused not only on firms embedding AI into legal delivery, but on the pressure that creates around pricing. If technology helps lawyers complete certain tasks more quickly, clients are increasingly asking how those efficiencies should be reflected in what they pay.

That matters because it moves the AI conversation beyond productivity. It starts to raise questions about which work should be automated, where lawyers add the greatest value and how firms structure teams around that work.

At the same time, new AI-native legal businesses are beginning to emerge. In October, former Allen & Overy senior partner Wim Dejonghe launched Falcon, combining AI-enabled contract review with qualified lawyer oversight.

None of this suggests the traditional law firm model is about to disappear. But it does show that the conversation is moving quickly from whether AI has a place in legal work to how firms organise, price and resource that work when it does.

For commercial property teams, that raises some interesting recruitment and development questions.

The work can involve substantial volumes of leases, title information, contracts and due diligence material, making it an obvious area in which technology could support some of the more process-heavy tasks. But if AI changes where lawyers spend their time, what could that mean for the skills firms need, the work junior lawyers do and the way future commercial property talent is developed?

AI can support the process, but judgement still matters

There is an important distinction between using AI to help process information and relying on it to make legal or commercial judgements.

A tool may be able to extract key information, assist with reviewing documents or help organise a large volume of material. The lawyer still needs to understand what that information means in the context of the transaction, identify the issues that genuinely matter to the client and know when something requires further investigation.

That distinction is likely to matter increasingly when firms recruit.

Technical commercial property experience will remain fundamental, but alongside it firms may place greater value on lawyers who can apply sound judgement, communicate commercially with clients and use technology confidently without becoming over-reliant on it.

The Law Society’s guidance on building AI skills within legal teams makes much the same point. It argues that lawyers increasingly need to understand how to delegate suitable tasks to AI, assess the output and recognise when the technology has got something wrong.

What could this mean at entry level?

This is where the discussion becomes particularly interesting from a recruitment and development perspective.

Some of the work AI is well suited to supporting is also the type of work that has traditionally sat with paralegals, trainees and junior lawyers. First-stage document review, extracting information and working through large volumes of material have often been part of the early years of a legal career.

If technology reduces the time spent on some of that busywork, it does not automatically follow that firms will need fewer junior people.

It could instead mean that junior roles become more sophisticated earlier, with less time spent processing information and more opportunity to become involved in analysis, client communication and the wider commercial context of a transaction.

There are already examples of junior lawyers playing an active role in AI adoption. The Law Society recently highlighted how trainees at VWV were involved in helping to shape the firm’s approach to AI, looking at where the technology could support existing tasks and improve client service

But there is an important question behind that opportunity.

If some of the busywork disappears, where does the learning happen?

Repetitive work is not necessarily glamorous, but repetition has traditionally played a part in developing legal judgement.

A junior commercial property lawyer may read dozens of leases, review title documentation repeatedly or work through numerous due diligence exercises before they begin instinctively to recognise what is unusual, what is important and what needs escalating.

If technology shortens part of that process, firms may need to become more deliberate about replacing the learning that came with it.

That might mean more structured supervision, earlier exposure to client conversations, greater explanation of the reasoning behind decisions and making sure junior lawyers still understand the underlying documents rather than relying solely on AI-generated summaries.

This matters particularly because the SRA’s current guidance is clear that responsibility for legal work remains with the professionals and firms using the technology. Its August warning notice points to cases involving AI-generated inaccuracies, including false citations, and concerns around client confidentiality. The SRA also makes clear that those supervising junior or non-authorised colleagues can breach their regulatory obligations if inaccurate material is put forward without adequate review or supervision.

That puts even greater weight on supervision. If junior lawyers are working with AI-generated material, firms need to make sure they understand how to challenge it, when to escalate concerns and why the underlying legal issue matters, rather than simply accepting the output in front of them.

For commercial property teams, that reinforces the wider point: if technology removes some of the traditional groundwork, the learning and oversight around it need to become more deliberate.

Could hiring expectations begin to change too?

It is too early to say that AI is fundamentally changing the structure of commercial property teams, and firms will inevitably adopt the technology at different speeds.

What we can reasonably expect is that the conversation around skills will continue to develop.

At junior level, adaptability, curiosity and the confidence to question an AI-generated answer may become increasingly valuable alongside technical grounding.

For more experienced lawyers, the emphasis may remain on the areas where human expertise adds the most value: commercial judgement, negotiation, client relationships, supervision and the ability to manage more complex transactions.

For firms, the challenge is not simply deciding which technology to adopt. It is making sure the people strategy develops alongside it.

Thinking beyond the next vacancy

There is a longer-term recruitment point here too.

Even if technology eventually reduces the amount of routine work undertaken at junior level, firms will still need experienced commercial property solicitors, senior associates and partners in the years ahead.

Those lawyers need to develop somewhere.

That makes it important not to look at AI purely through the lens of short-term efficiency. Firms also need to think about how today’s trainees, paralegals and junior solicitors gain the experience and judgement they will need to become tomorrow’s senior talent.

For commercial property teams considering their next hire, the question may therefore be less about whether AI changes the number of people required and more about how the role itself could evolve, which skills will matter most and how those skills will be developed over time.

At Clayton Legal, we work with law firms and legal professionals across the commercial (and residential) property market, giving us insight into both the skills employers are looking for and the career priorities shaping candidate decisions.

Whether you’re reviewing your commercial property team, planning your next hire or considering your own career options, contact me for a confidential conversation about how I can help.

Few workplace debates have shifted as dramatically as flexible working over the past six years.

Before 2020, flexibility in the workplace could mean anything from adjusted hours and part-time arrangements to accommodating caring responsibilities. The pandemic put one particular form of flexibility firmly in the spotlight: where we work. Homeworking became widespread almost overnight, hybrid models followed, and the number of days spent in the office quickly became shorthand for a much broader conversation about workplace flexibility.

Six years later, that conversation is shifting again.

Some employers have increased office requirements, while others continue to offer significant choice over where and when people work. The debate has become remarkably polarised too, with some of the UK’s most prominent business leaders taking strong positions.

In July this year, Boohoo CEO Dan Finley told the company’s 1,500 head-office employees to return to the office five days a week, saying staff should not be “sat in bed wearing grey tracksuit bottoms”. His argument went beyond productivity. He pointed to collaboration, learning from colleagues and the importance of employees “living and breathing” Manchester as reasons for bringing people back together. The Independent reported on the move here.

It is a striking example, but it also highlights an important distinction. Flexible working is not simply another term for working from home. Where somebody works is part of the conversation, but so are when they work, how much autonomy they have and whether their working arrangements can adapt when circumstances change.

And that brings the debate much closer to what we are hearing across the legal profession. It’s against that backdrop, we wanted to know what legal professionals themselves actually think.

So, how many days in the office is the sweet spot?

We recently asked our legal network a straightforward question: how many days working in the office is the sweet spot?

Of 327 people who voted, 46% chose one or two days a week. A further 27% opted for three days, while 19% wanted to work fully remotely. At the other end of the scale, just 5% selected full-time office working.

On the face of it, that looks like a fairly emphatic vote for hybrid working. We then followed the poll with individual conversations, however, and those responses tell a much more interesting story.

One person actually preferred the office because home was somewhere they wanted to protect as family space. Another was happy to attend once or twice a week but felt their commute made more frequent attendance difficult. Parents talked about fitting work around their children, while others focused less on the number of days and more on having the autonomy to decide where they could work most effectively.

Perhaps most tellingly, one respondent put culture and personality fit ahead of working location altogether. Their view was that when the relationship between firm and employee works well, flexibility tends to follow from both sides.

That feels much closer to the flexible working conversation we are having with candidates today.

Flexible working does not simply mean working from home

Somewhere along the way, flexible working and homeworking have become almost interchangeable terms. Yet they are not the same thing, and treating flexibility as a simple question of “how many days are you in?” risks overlooking what legal professionals actually value.

Flexibility can mean hybrid or remote working, but it can also mean different start and finish times, part-time hours, compressed hours, job sharing or greater choice around office days. Sometimes it simply means having enough autonomy to deal with circumstances outside work without unnecessary friction.

Our recent conversations illustrate that particularly well. The respondent with young children was not simply asking to work from home. They valued being able to organise parts of their working day around family responsibilities. The commuter was not opposed to office working either, but five journeys each week changed the equation. Another person actively preferred being in the office because it created a clear boundary between work and home.

The Law Society’s June 2026 research into flexible working takes a similarly broad view. Its definition includes flexible start and finish times, hybrid and remote working, part-time hours and job sharing. The research found that flexible working has become a core expectation for many solicitors, but also that experiences vary significantly across the profession.

That distinction matters for firms reviewing their proposition. A generous hybrid policy does not necessarily make a firm flexible, just as expecting people in the office several days each week does not automatically make it inflexible.

Perhaps the more useful question is whether people have appropriate autonomy within a framework that still works for clients, colleagues and the business.

The legal backdrop is changing too

There is another reason for firms to keep flexible working on the agenda as we head towards 2027.

Employees have had a statutory right to request flexible working from their first day of employment since April 2024. The Employment Rights Act 2025 will strengthen that framework further, with changes due to come into force in 2027. Under the new provisions, employers will need to consider whether refusing a statutory flexible working request on one of the existing business grounds is reasonable. They will also need to explain their reasoning when they refuse a request.

The Government has also consulted during 2026 on the process employers should follow when they cannot immediately agree a request.

For law firms, however, statutory compliance is only one part of the picture. The bigger recruitment question is what flexibility looks like within their own business and whether that proposition remains competitive in the market.

What our Salary Survey tells us

Our own 2026 Salary Survey and Market Insights Report adds further weight to that conversation.

When we asked legal professionals who were unlikely to consider moving roles what kept them where they were, good work/life balance came out on top, selected by 64% of respondents. Working arrangements, including home, flexible and hybrid working, followed at 56%, while culture and work environment were selected by 48%.

By comparison, just 14% cited their firm’s benefits package.

There has also been a shift in why people leave. Better work/life balance was cited by 17.5% of respondents who had left their previous role, up from 12.6% last year. Salary and benefits, meanwhile, fell as a primary reason for moving from 19.2% to 11.4%.

None of this suggests that salary has stopped mattering. Far from it. What it does suggest is that legal professionals increasingly assess the whole proposition when deciding whether to stay or move. Pay sits alongside the work itself, progression, leadership, culture and the way a role fits around the rest of somebody’s life.

Flexibility forms part of that equation, rather than representing the whole equation.

Why firms are pushing back

There are also perfectly legitimate reasons why law firms may want their people together more often, and any useful conversation about flexible working needs to acknowledge them.

Legal careers develop through more than formal training. Junior lawyers learn by listening to conversations, asking quick questions and watching experienced colleagues deal with clients and difficult situations. Supervision can be easier face to face, while collaboration, team relationships and spontaneous knowledge sharing can prove harder to recreate when people rarely work together physically.

Client requirements matter too. What works well for one practice area, team or level of seniority may not translate neatly to another. A blanket approach to flexibility can therefore create its own challenges, particularly if firms struggle to balance individual preferences with supervision, service delivery and team cohesion.

Equally, asking someone to undertake a lengthy commute simply to spend the day working independently or joining virtual calls can be difficult to justify. Mandated office attendance arguably works best when people understand what they gain from being there.

That shifts the question away from simply how many days should people be in the office? towards something more useful: what do we want office time to achieve?

Flexibility as a recruitment and retention issue

This is where the conversation becomes particularly relevant to recruitment.

A firm offering two days in the office will not automatically beat a competitor asking for three if the second opportunity provides better work, clearer progression, stronger leadership or a culture that suits the candidate. Our follow-up conversations make that particularly clear.

But rigid working requirements can narrow a firm’s candidate pool before those other qualities ever enter the conversation. For an experienced lawyer considering several opportunities, an additional two days of commuting each week may carry a meaningful cost in both money and time. For somebody with caring responsibilities, the issue may be whether the firm’s working arrangements make the role practical at all.

Our Salary Survey found flexibility influencing attraction and retention across several of the practice areas where experienced candidates remain difficult to secure. That does not mean firms need to offer whatever arrangement a candidate requests. It does mean working arrangements have become part of the overall value proposition, alongside salary, progression, quality of work and culture.

The strongest approach is therefore unlikely to be simply “more flexibility”. It is clarity about what a firm can offer, why its model works that way and where there is genuine room for individual choice.

Is offering flexibility your biggest flex heading into 2027?

Probably not on its own.

After several years in which working practices changed at extraordinary speed, we may finally be reaching a more nuanced stage of the conversation. Fully remote, hybrid and predominantly office-based models can all work. Equally, each can fail if the structure does not suit the team, the work or the people involved.

For law firms, the opportunity heading into 2027 is not necessarily to offer the fewest office days. It is to think more carefully about what flexibility actually means within their organisation.

• Can people adjust their working patterns when circumstances require it?
• Is office attendance purposeful?
• Do managers apply policies consistently?
• Can junior lawyers still access the supervision and development they need?
• And, importantly, does the firm’s approach help rather than hinder its ability to attract and retain the people it wants?

For candidates, the same nuance matters. A headline number of homeworking days tells you relatively little about how flexible a firm really is, or whether the role, culture and management style will work for you.

If our poll and the conversations that followed tell us anything, it is that the “sweet spot” is not necessarily a number.

It is finding a working arrangement that works for the individual, the team and the firm.

About Clayton Legal

Clayton Legal is a specialist legal recruitment consultancy with more than 27 years’ experience supporting law firms and legal professionals across England and Wales. We work with firms of all sizes across our specialist practice areas, helping them attract, recruit and retain the people they need to build successful teams.

Our annual Salary Survey and Market Insights Report draws on data and conversations from across the legal profession to provide a clearer picture of salaries, benefits, working arrangements and the factors influencing career decisions.

If you are reviewing your firm’s approach to flexible working, benchmarking your wider employee proposition or considering your next hire, our specialist consultants can provide insight into what we are seeing and hearing across the market.

There is a particular brief that comes up time and again in my conversations with conveyancing firms across London, the Home Counties and the South Coast.

An experienced conveyancer. Someone who can pick up a caseload, manage clients confidently, work with minimal supervision and, ideally, hit the ground running.

It is an entirely understandable ask. Particularly in a market where firms are watching costs carefully, adding headcount needs to make commercial sense. But when so many firms are looking for broadly the same profile, there is a question I think is worth asking.

Are we all looking for an experienced conveyancer who is becoming increasingly difficult to find, while not doing enough to develop the next generation of them?

As firms start looking at budgets, performance and plans for 2027, September feels like a particularly good time to have that conversation.

A property market that requires a little perspective

It is difficult to talk about conveyancing recruitment without acknowledging the property market itself, particularly across London and the South East.

The headlines have undoubtedly been mixed. The latest UK House Price Index showed London prices down 2.5% in the year to June 2026, making it the weakest-performing English region. However, that is only one measure of a much bigger market. HMRC’s latest transaction figures showed 106,620 non-seasonally adjusted residential transactions across the UK in July, 5% higher than the same month last year.

There is plenty happening locally too. HM Land Registry’s July data recorded more applications in the South East than any other region, with Greater London second. That data reflects Land Registry workload rather than being a direct measure of current market activity, but it is another useful reminder that “softer” does not mean “stopped”.

That broadly reflects the conversations I am having. Law firms are not necessarily throwing open the doors and hiring at volume, but neither have their people requirements disappeared. Instead, many are being more considered about where they add headcount and what they need that person to deliver.

And that tends to bring us back to experience.

Everyone wants experience, but where does it come from?

There is nothing unreasonable about wanting someone who can operate independently. An experienced conveyancer can bring immediate capacity, reassure clients and reduce the supervision burden on senior colleagues.

The difficulty comes when every firm wants that person ready-made.

Someone has to give a junior conveyancer their first real opportunity to manage files. Someone has to develop the person who is currently capable of handling a caseload but has not yet supervised others. And someone has to give a good senior conveyancer exposure to management, leadership or business development if they are going to progress beyond being an excellent fee earner.

That development takes time.

It also creates a genuine commercial dilemma for firms. If somebody is very good at their current job, moving them away from it can create an immediate gap. A conveyancer who manages a significant caseload efficiently and bills consistently is valuable exactly where they are.

I completely understand why firms can be reluctant to disrupt that.

The problem comes when today’s solution creates tomorrow’s vacancy.

Can somebody become too valuable to promote?

We have written previously at Clayton Legal about what genuine career progression actually looks like, and I think the question is particularly relevant in conveyancing.

Progression cannot simply mean a new title while the job underneath it remains broadly the same. For somebody who wants to develop, it might mean supervising colleagues, managing a team, becoming more involved in client relationships or taking on greater commercial responsibility.

If those opportunities never materialise because somebody is simply too useful carrying their existing caseload, eventually another firm may offer them.

At that point, the original firm has two problems. It has lost an experienced conveyancer and now needs to replace somebody whose experience it helped to build.

There will always be people who are perfectly happy doing the job they already do, and progression should not mean forcing everyone towards management. But firms need to understand what their people actually want and whether there is a credible route to achieving it.

Otherwise, it is very easy to assume somebody is settled right up until they hand in their notice.

What is actually making people stay?

This is where the findings from Clayton Legal’s latest Salary Survey and Market Insights Report become interesting.

When we asked legal professionals who were unlikely to consider moving what was keeping them with their current firm, 64% cited good work/life balance. Working arrangements, including home, flexible and hybrid working, followed at 56%, while 48% cited culture and working environment.

Benefits, by comparison, were selected by just 14%.

There has also been movement in the reasons people actually leave. Better work/life balance accounted for 17.5% of moves, up from 12.6% in our previous survey, while salary and benefits fell as a primary reason for moving.

That does not mean salary is unimportant. Particularly across London and the South East, where salaries, commuting costs and the cost of living can vary significantly within a relatively small geographical area, remuneration absolutely forms part of the decision.

But candidates rarely talk to me about one thing in isolation.

The role itself matters. The firm matters. Caseload and support matter. Progression matters. Flexibility and the commute can matter enormously. Often, somebody who initially tells me they want more money starts describing several other frustrations once we properly talk through why they are considering a move.

For firms trying to retain experienced conveyancers, understanding those reasons before somebody enters the job market is hugely valuable.

London, the Home Counties and South Coast are not one market

Another challenge with conveyancing recruitment is treating the South as though it operates as one homogeneous market.

It doesn’t.

A role in the City presents a very different proposition from one in Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire or along the South Coast. Salary expectations differ, but so do commuting patterns, working arrangements, types of client and firm, caseloads and candidates’ priorities.

A London firm may be able to offer a higher salary but ask someone to accept a substantial commute several times a week. A Home Counties or South Coast firm may not always compete pound-for-pound but could offer somebody a shorter journey, more flexibility, greater responsibility or a clearer route forward.

Neither proposition is automatically better. It depends on the person.

That is why I think firms need to understand their actual proposition before going to market. If you are looking for an experienced conveyancer, why should that person leave a firm where they are already established to join yours?

Salary may form part of the answer, but increasingly it cannot be the whole answer.

September is when the 2027 conversation should start

This is perhaps the biggest reason I wanted to write about this now.

September is a natural point in the year for firms to take stock. You have enough of 2026 behind you to understand performance, workload and where pressure points have emerged. Budget conversations for next year are beginning too.

Headcount needs to be part of that discussion.

If you know you are likely to need another experienced conveyancer in the first quarter of 2027, January is probably too late to start thinking about it.

Many experienced legal professionals have three-month notice periods. Before that comes identifying potential candidates, initial conversations, interviews, possibly second-stage meetings, negotiating an offer and allowing somebody time to make what can be a significant career decision.

And that assumes the first person you meet is the right person.

Starting the conversation now does not mean making unnecessary hires months ahead of need. It means understanding the market, testing whether your expectations are realistic and giving yourself options.

Before you recruit, look at who you already have

There is another important part to 2027 workforce planning that has nothing to do with advertising a vacancy.

Look at the team you already have.

Where are you heavily reliant on one experienced person? Who could take a step forward over the next 12 months? Is there somebody who could become the experienced conveyancer you think you need externally if they received the right development now? And are there good people whose progression has quietly stalled because moving them would leave an inconvenient gap elsewhere?

Not every skills gap can or should be solved internally. External recruitment brings fresh experience, new ideas and skills that may simply not exist within the current team.

But recruitment should sit alongside development rather than automatically replacing it.

If firms continually recruit the finished article without creating opportunities for people to become that finished article, the experienced conveyancer shortage becomes a problem the whole market perpetuates.

Planning now gives you more choices later

The property market across London and the South is not without its challenges, but I don’t think that calls for pessimism. If anything, a more measured environment gives firms an opportunity to think carefully about the teams they want to build rather than simply reacting to immediate workload.

The question heading into 2027 is not just “Do we need to hire?”

It is:

• what experience do we need?
• where are our vulnerabilities?
• who could develop internally?
• and where do we genuinely need to bring somebody new into the business?

And if the answer includes an experienced conveyancer, now is the time to start understanding who might actually be available.

Because if every firm waits until January to look for the same ready-made candidate, we shouldn’t be surprised when that candidate proves difficult to find.

Frequently asked questions about conveyancing recruitment

When should law firms start recruiting for 2027 conveyancing roles?

For experienced hires, firms should ideally start workforce planning several months before they need somebody in post. Three-month notice periods are common among experienced legal professionals, and firms also need to allow time for the recruitment and interview process. Starting market conversations in autumn 2026 can therefore make sense for roles needed in early 2027.

Why are experienced conveyancers difficult to recruit?

Experienced conveyancers combine technical knowledge with the ability to manage files, clients and transactions independently. Developing that experience takes time, and demand for people who can join a firm with minimal supervision remains strong. Firms may need to balance external recruitment with developing people already within their teams.

What attracts experienced conveyancers to a new firm?

Salary remains important, but it is rarely the only consideration. Our conversations with candidates regularly include workload, progression, management, support, flexibility, commute, culture and the quality of the work. The strongest recruitment propositions tend to give candidates a clear reason why moving firms will improve their career or working life.

About Clayton Legal

Clayton Legal is a specialist legal recruitment consultancy with more than 27 years’ experience supporting law firms and legal professionals across England and Wales.

Our specialist consultants work within defined practice areas and regions, giving them a detailed understanding of the firms, talent markets and hiring challenges within their particular area.

I specialise in conveyancing recruitment across London, the Home Counties and South Coast, working with firms and legal professionals at different stages of their hiring and career journeys.

Alongside supporting immediate vacancies, our whole team work with firms on longer-term workforce planning, salary benchmarking and market insight. If you are starting to think about your 2027 conveyancing team (or any other legal department in your Firm), or simply want to understand what the candidate market currently looks like across London and the South, get in touch for a confidential conversation.

When legal professionals tell me they are considering a move, “progression” is one of those words that comes up regularly. But it does not always mean the same thing. 

Sometimes someone wants a promotion or a clearer route towards qualification. In other cases, they are less concerned about a new title and more interested in what the role is allowing them to become. 

They may want greater autonomy, more responsibility for their own caseload or exposure to more complex work. In personal injury and clinical negligence, for example, that might mean progressing from more routine matters into complex multi-track work, developing experience in catastrophic injury or becoming more involved in strategy, supervision and client relationships. 

The frustration often comes when somebody feels ready for that next stage but cannot see how to reach it with their current firm. 

That is reflected in our own 2026/27 Salary Survey, where career progression was the single most common reason legal professionals gave for leaving their previous role, cited by 27% of respondents. 

And that creates an important question for employers:  “Does your firm offer genuine career progression, or simply the possibility of promotion when a suitable position happens to become available?” 

Progression is not always about moving upwards 

Career progression is often discussed in terms of hierarchy: paralegal to trainee, solicitor to associate, associate to senior associate and eventually, perhaps, partnership. 

Those milestones matter, but they only tell part of the story. 

A legal professional can progress significantly without changing their job title. Greater ownership of cases, exposure to more challenging work, responsibility for mentoring colleagues, developing a specialism, becoming more involved with clients or contributing to business development can all represent meaningful career development. 

Our own 2026 Salary Survey gives some useful context. When we asked legal professionals what they considered most important for career progression, recognition of achievements was selected by 49.4% of respondents, followed closely by professional development and training at 47.1% and mentorship from senior colleagues at 46.6%. 

Access to high-quality projects or cases was also selected by 28.7%. 

Those findings are interesting because they suggest progression is not simply about what appears on an organisation chart. People want to know that they are developing, that somebody recognises that development and that there are experienced people around them who will help them take the next step. 

That is increasingly important in a market where candidates are looking carefully at what a role will add to their longer-term career.  

More work is not necessarily progression 

There is another distinction worth making. 

Giving a capable person more files is not automatically development. 

Neither is increasing targets, asking someone to cover for a more senior colleague or gradually adding responsibilities without changing the support, autonomy or recognition around their role. 

Genuine progression should involve something meaningful changing. 

That could be the complexity of the work, the decisions somebody is trusted to make, the expertise they are developing or the influence they have within the team. It may also involve clearer recognition through remuneration or title, although these do not necessarily need to happen at exactly the same time. 

For firms, this requires more deliberate career conversations. 

Rather than simply asking somebody where they would like to be in five years, it can be more useful to look at what the next six or twelve months should add to their experience. 

What have they mastered already? What do they need exposure to next? Which skills are missing? Who can help them develop those skills? 

The SRA’s Annual Assessment of Continuing Competence, published in August 2026, is relevant here too. The regulator found that some solicitors continue to focus their learning and development heavily on technical legal knowledge rather than the wider skills they need to remain competent throughout their careers. The SRA also makes clear that firms have a responsibility to ensure their employees are competent to carry out their roles. 

Development therefore needs to be broader than keeping somebody legally up to date. Judgement, client management, supervision, communication, commercial awareness and leadership all become increasingly important as careers develop. 

The problem with being too valuable in your current role 

There is a practical difficulty here that I think many firms will recognise. 

Sometimes the person most ready to progress is also very good at what they currently do. 

They may have a strong caseload, good billing figures, established client relationships and an important role within the team. Moving them into a different position, giving them time to develop another specialism or reducing part of their existing caseload creates an immediate operational question. 

Who does that work instead? 

It is easy to see why progression can stall at that point. Particularly in busy fee-earning teams, promoting or developing one person can create a vacancy somewhere else. 

But there is a longer-term risk in allowing that to become the reason somebody cannot move forward. 

If an employee repeatedly sees opportunities delayed because the firm needs them exactly where they are, the unintended message can be that being good at their job has made it harder to progress. 

Eventually, the simplest way for that individual to take the next step may be to join another firm. 

That is something we see in recruitment conversations. People are not always leaving because they dislike their employer. Sometimes they leave because another firm can offer experience, responsibility or a career path that their current one has not yet been able to provide. 

Fulfilment and development are closely connected 

This also links to something else that came through strongly in our Salary Survey: fulfilment. 

When we asked what makes legal work feel fulfilling, the legal work itself was the most common answer, selected by 55.9% of respondents. Learning new skills or knowledge was also selected by 26.8%. 

That is worth considering when firms think about retention. 

Salary, flexibility and culture remain important, but people also want to feel that their work is going somewhere. For an ambitious lawyer, spending another two years doing largely the same work at the same level may become frustrating even when most other aspects of the role are positive. 

In PI and clinical negligence, this can be particularly visible because development can often be seen through the work itself. Someone may want exposure to more complex cases, greater ownership of strategy, experience working with particular experts or counsel, or the opportunity to build deeper expertise within a specialist area. 

Giving people access to that development can therefore support both progression and fulfilment. 

The Law Society noted in July that recruitment and development remain a challenge for more than four in ten mid-sized firms. It also highlights the retention pressure that can develop when associates and mid-level lawyers cannot see a realistic route forward. 

That aligns closely with what we hear from candidates. 

The two-to-five-year point deserves attention 

Our 2026 Salary Survey also produced an interesting finding when we looked at how long respondents had been with their current employer. 

Among those who answered both questions, 62.5% of people who had been in their current role for two to three years said they were likely or very likely to consider a move within the next six months. For those with four to five years’ service, the figure was 58%. 

The sample sizes become smaller when we cross-tabulate the data, so these figures should be treated as an indicator rather than a market-wide measure. Nevertheless, the pattern reflects something we regularly see in recruitment. 

Two or three years into a role is often the point at which people start asking what comes next. 

They know the firm. They understand the work and have usually established themselves within the team. The question becomes whether the next stage of their career is visible. 

That means the progression conversation should ideally happen before somebody reaches that point and starts exploring the external market. 

Succession planning should not start at partnership 

Law firms understandably spend time thinking about succession at senior level. We even wrote a blog on the subject! 

Who takes over a major client relationship when a partner retires? Who has the leadership potential to move onto the board? Where is the next generation of partners coming from? 

Those are important questions, particularly as experienced lawyers take decades of knowledge and relationships with them when they leave the profession. 

But succession planning should run throughout the organisation. 

If a senior associate is expected to become a partner, who is being developed to step into the work they leave behind? As an associate moves into a more senior role, who is gaining the experience required to replace them? If a paralegal or junior fee earner is ready for greater responsibility, is somebody coming through behind them?

Progression works best as a pipeline rather than a series of isolated promotions. 

This becomes even more significant when we look at future demand. Skills England’s August 2026 workforce projections identify solicitors and lawyers as the occupation with the highest projected additional employment demand among the priority roles within Professional and Business Services, with 17,300 additional workers projected between 2025 and 2035. 

That is a long-term projection rather than a forecast of immediate vacancies, but it reinforces the importance of thinking about where future legal talent will come from. 

Firms cannot rely indefinitely on recruiting experienced people from competitors whenever a gap appears. 

Building the pipeline makes progression easier 

This is where recruitment and retention start to become the same workforce-planning conversation. 

If a firm genuinely wants to promote from within, it needs enough talent coming through underneath those people. 

That may mean recruiting paralegals and junior fee earners with the potential to develop, investing in training contracts or qualification routes, or keeping in touch with future candidates before a vacancy becomes urgent. 

It also means understanding the external market. 

What experience is available locally? Which skills are difficult to recruit? Where are salary expectations moving? Are competitors developing people internally or recruiting experienced lawyers laterally? 

The latest KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs is a useful reminder that a larger candidate market does not automatically mean specialist talent is easy to find. Candidate availability continued to rise in July, yet employers were still increasing starting salaries to secure people with the right skills and experience. 

For law firms, developing an existing employee can therefore be significantly more valuable than discovering, too late, that replacing them externally is difficult. 

What does genuine progression look like? 

There is no single model because careers and firms are different. 

But I think there are some useful questions for firms to ask. 

• Does each person understand what the next stage of their career could realistically look like? 
• Are there opportunities to broaden their experience rather than simply increase their workload?  
• Do managers know which employees are looking for more responsibility or a particular specialism?  
• Are promotion criteria clear? 
• Is development being discussed throughout the year rather than only during an annual appraisal? 
• And when somebody is ready to progress, does the firm have a plan for the gap they will leave behind? 

That last question may be the most important. 

Career progression becomes much harder when every internal move creates a crisis elsewhere in the team. Building a stronger talent pipeline gives firms far more freedom to develop their best people rather than feeling they need to keep them where they are. 

Progression is ultimately about momentum 

Over the years I have worked in legal recruitment, people have moved firms for almost every reason imaginable. 

Salary matters. So do management relationships, working patterns, location, culture and work-life balance. 

But progression remains one of the themes that comes up consistently. 

And when candidates talk about progression, they are not always saying they want a promotion tomorrow. 

More often, they want to know they are still moving. 

They want to be trusted with something they could not have handled a year ago, develop expertise they did not previously have or see a realistic route towards the person they want to become professionally. 

For firms, creating that sense of momentum can be one of the strongest retention tools available. 

It also requires planning. If you want people to progress internally, somebody needs to be developing behind them. 

At Clayton Legal, we work with firms across the UK to understand both their immediate recruitment needs and the longer-term talent challenges sitting behind them. That includes looking at where skills gaps are likely to emerge, what talent is available in the market and how external recruitment can support internal progression rather than simply reacting when somebody leaves. 

If you are reviewing the structure of your team, thinking about succession or finding that good people are leaving because they cannot see their next step, please do pick up the phone for an informed (but informal) view of the market. 

Counter-offers have always been one of the more complicated parts of recruitment. Someone makes the decision to leave, secures another role and hands in their notice, only for their current firm to come back with a reason to stay.

From the outside, the question can seem relatively simple. Is the counter-offer good enough to make you change your mind?

In reality, the decision tends to have started much earlier.

I was interested to understand how legal professionals currently feel about counter-offers, so I recently asked my LinkedIn network a straightforward question: Would you accept a counter-offer from your current firm?

Only 18% said yes and 23% said no. The majority, 58%, chose the third option: “It depends why I was leaving.”

That was the answer I found most interesting, so I followed up directly with some of the people who voted to find out what was behind it.

The conversations covered salary, progression, training, culture, feeling valued, relationships with colleagues and the uncertainty that naturally comes with moving somewhere new. What stood out was how rarely the decision could be reduced to money.

In many cases, the real counter-offer conversation had begun long before anybody resigned.

What happened before the resignation?

One person I spoke to described a situation where concerns had already been raised with the firm, conversations had taken place and possible solutions had been agreed. When those changes did not happen, the issue was raised again. Eventually, having exhausted what they felt were the available options, they decided to leave.

At that point, a counter-offer felt less like a solution and more like something that had arrived too late.

Another respondent had effectively been carrying out the work of a conveyancer while still employed as an assistant. They had already asked for their salary to reflect the responsibilities they were taking on, but felt the increase offered fell significantly short of the level they believed the role warranted. When they eventually decided to leave, there was an indication that more money might be available.

Their reaction was understandable: why had it taken a resignation for the firm to recognise something they had already tried to address?

This is where the usual debate about whether somebody “should” accept a counter-offer can miss an important part of the story. By resignation day, there may already have been months of conversations, frustrations and decisions behind the scenes.

A firm may be able to change somebody’s salary overnight. It is harder to change how they feel about whether they were heard in the months before it.

Money matters, but what does the money represent?

Salary came up repeatedly in the conversations I had, although not always because somebody simply wanted to earn more.

For some, it was about whether their pay fairly reflected the work they were doing. For others, it sat alongside wider financial ambitions and a sense that they had reached the limit of what their existing firm or structure could offer.

That distinction matters.

There will always be occasions when remuneration genuinely is the main reason someone considers moving. Perhaps the market has shifted, their responsibilities have increased or their salary has simply fallen behind comparable roles. If the current employer recognises that and makes a sensible adjustment, accepting a counter-offer can be a perfectly rational decision.

But salary can also become a proxy for something bigger. If somebody has been taking on more responsibility without recognition, or has repeatedly tried to have a conversation about their contribution, the figure on the counter-offer may represent how valued they feel rather than simply how much they are paid.

The latest labour-market data makes this particularly relevant. The KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs published in August 2026 found that candidate availability continued to rise sharply during July, yet starting salary growth reached a six-month high. Recruiters frequently linked those increases to employers struggling to secure people with the right skills and experience.

That is an important distinction in the current market. More people being ‘available’ for work does not necessarily mean that the particular experience an employer needs is easy to replace.

For legal professionals, an external offer can sometimes be the point at which the market value of their experience becomes much clearer. For firms, it can expose a gap between the value attached to retaining someone and the conversations that were taking place before they resigned.

Progression may be harder to counter than salary

Career progression was just as prominent as money in the responses I received.

One person felt they had reached their ceiling with their current employer and could not see a clear route forward. Another was focused on eventually qualifying and said that a serious opportunity to progress would be central to deciding whether they stayed or moved. Someone else had repeatedly asked for further training, but felt that those opportunities had never materialised.

These are more difficult issues to resolve through a counter-offer because meaningful progression needs more than a promise.

• If somebody is offered a new title, what will actually change about their role?
• If further training is promised, what will it involve and when will it happen?
• If there is now a route towards qualification or promotion, why was that route not previously available and what needs to happen next?

This does not mean those promises cannot be genuine. Sometimes a resignation brings an issue into sharper focus and prompts a conversation that should have happened earlier. Businesses change, opportunities arise and managers do not always know that somebody is unhappy until the situation becomes more serious.

What matters is whether there is enough substance behind the new proposal to make the original reason for leaving genuinely disappear.

One respondent captured that particularly well. They explained that if they were leaving because their current employer could not offer progression, but the firm then came back with a credible route to develop and qualify, they would consider staying rather than starting again somewhere unfamiliar.

I think that is an entirely reasonable position.

Sometimes staying is the right answer

Recruiters are sometimes accused of being automatically anti-counter-offer. I understand why. From a purely transactional point of view, a counter-offer can undo weeks of work just as a placement is about to happen.

But telling every candidate that they should reject one would not be particularly useful advice.

The conversations following my poll reinforced that there can be perfectly good reasons somebody might stay.

One respondent who voted yes described a firm they genuinely enjoyed working for. They felt well rewarded through salary and bonus, had strong benefits and could walk to work in around 20 minutes. They were not actively dissatisfied with their career and believed it would take a very compelling opportunity to improve the overall package they already had.

That broader picture matters.

A job is not simply salary plus title. It is the people you spend your week with, the journey to work, the flexibility available, the work itself, the benefits, the confidence you have in your employer and how all of that fits around the rest of your life.

Several people who answered “it depends” also talked about the people around them as a reason they might stay. You can genuinely like your colleagues and feel part of a strong team while recognising that you need something different professionally.

When a counter-offer arrives, those relationships and the familiarity of your current firm understandably carry weight.

Starting somewhere new involves uncertainty, however thorough the interview process has been. Staying with people and systems you already know can feel safer.

The important question is whether you are staying because the opportunity in front of you has genuinely become the better one, or because leaving something familiar suddenly feels uncomfortable.

And sometimes the reason for leaving cannot be countered

At the other end of the scale were people who knew that no realistic counter-offer would change their decision.

One respondent had experienced a working environment they considered toxic. Another felt they were no longer being challenged and wanted somewhere they could continue developing professionally. Money was not the deciding factor for either.

This is perhaps where the original reason for leaving becomes most important.

Salary, title, bonus and sometimes working arrangements can be changed relatively quickly. A difficult culture, damaged relationship, unsustainable workload or prolonged lack of professional challenge is unlikely to change because somebody has handed in their notice.

That does not mean employers should not try to understand why someone is leaving. In fact, those conversations can be extremely valuable. But there is a difference between understanding whether a genuine solution exists and assuming every resignation can be reversed with a better package.

For the individual, it is worth separating what the counter-offer actually changes from everything that will be exactly the same when you return to work the following Monday.

There is a lesson here for firms too

Although I asked the original question of legal professionals in general, the responses provide useful insight for employers.

The strongest message for me was not that firms should stop making counter-offers. There will be circumstances where retaining somebody is the right decision for both sides.

It was that many counter-offers appear to arrive at the end of a much longer sequence of events.

People talked about asking for training, raising questions around salary, wanting clearer progression and having conversations about problems before deciding to leave. In several cases, resignation was not the first signal that something needed to change.

That creates an obvious retention question.

How much of the counter-offer conversation could have happened six months earlier?

Regular discussions about career plans, responsibilities, development and remuneration will not prevent every resignation, nor should they. People move for all sorts of reasons and sometimes another firm simply offers the right next step.

But they can reduce the likelihood of a valuable employee reaching the point where another employer has already provided the recognition or opportunity they had been looking for internally.

The current market adds another dimension. The July KPMG and REC Report on Jobs was already showing improving pay trends despite a marked increase in the supply of candidates, with employers paying more to secure people with sought-after skills. By August, permanent placements had stabilised after 45 months of decline, while the shortage of suitably skilled and experienced candidates continued to put upward pressure on starting salaries.

For firms employing experienced people in specialist areas of law, waiting until resignation to understand whether someone feels appropriately rewarded or can see a future with the business can therefore be an expensive way of finding out.

So, what should you do when the counter-offer arrives?

After reading the poll responses and speaking to people individually, I do not think there is a useful universal rule.

I would be wary of anyone who says you should always reject a counter-offer, just as I would be wary of assuming that a higher salary automatically makes staying the better decision.

Instead, return to the point at which you first started thinking about leaving.

What was happening?

Perhaps you felt underpaid for the work you were already doing. You may have wanted to qualify, manage more complex matters or see a clearer route towards progression. Or perhaps the culture was wrong, you needed more flexibility or you simply felt that you had stopped developing.

Then look at the counter-offer against that original reason.

Has something materially changed, or has a higher salary simply been placed around the same job?

If progression has been offered, is there a genuine plan behind it? Where remuneration was the issue, does the revised package fairly reflect the role or merely match the external offer? And if you had already raised your concerns, what gives you confidence that things will be different this time?

It is also worth applying exactly the same scrutiny to the new opportunity. Moving firm is not automatically the right answer simply because you have reached offer stage. Consider the work, people, progression, culture, flexibility, location, remuneration and longer-term opportunity on both sides.

The decision is not really between a new offer and a counter-offer. It’s between two versions of what your career could look like next.

Where does the recruiter fit into that decision?

This is one of the points where I think having an open relationship with your recruiter matters.

Our job should not be to tell you that your current employer is wrong and the new firm is right simply because we have helped arrange the move. We should understand why you started looking in the first place, what you were hoping to change and whether the opportunity you have been offered genuinely gives you that.

When a counter-offer arrives, we can also provide some distance from what can become a very emotional decision.

I have no problem telling somebody to think seriously about staying if the circumstances genuinely warrant it. Equally, if we have spent weeks talking about progression, culture or development and the counter-offer does nothing to address those things, I am going to remind them of the conversations that led us here.

That is not about “winning” against the counter-offer. It is about making sure the decision is based on the whole picture rather than the pressure of resignation day.

Perhaps that is why the 58% interested me so much.

“Depends why I was leaving” might sound like the less decisive answer to the poll, but after speaking to the people behind it, I think it is probably the most considered one.

The right question is rarely simply “Should I accept the counter-offer?”

It is “Has anything changed about why I wanted to leave?”

If you are considering your next move within the legal sector, or you have received an offer or counter-offer and want to talk through your options, get in touch with me for a confidential, no-pressure, conversation.

‘Brand’ influences more of our decisions than we perhaps realise. 

It affects what we buy, where we eat, the services we trust and, increasingly, where we look when we are thinking about our next career move. 

A familiar name carries weight. We already have a sense of who they are, what they do and what we might expect from them. When it comes to choosing an employer, that visibility can be particularly powerful. 

We see this regularly when speaking to lawyers in personal injury and clinical negligence. Larger national firms are often front of mind, particularly for those earlier in their careers. Their names are familiar, their vacancies are highly visible and there is usually plenty of information available about the careers, benefits and development opportunities they offer. 

For regional, independent and high street firms, that creates a different kind of recruitment challenge. 

Many can offer excellent quality work, closer access to senior lawyers, greater responsibility and genuine progression. But if those opportunities are less visible, candidates may simply be more likely to look towards the names they already know. 

So how does a regional firm compete when brand recognition is increasingly part of the career decision

The changing personal injury and clinical negligence market 

The structure of the legal market is changing. 

Personal injury, clinical negligence and other consumer-facing legal services have attracted increasing interest from private equity investors and larger legal groups. Firms including Fletchers and Express Solicitors have secured external investment to support growth, while groups such as Lawfront have expanded by acquiring established regional practices. 

This does not mean that independent firms are disappearing. The LexisNexis Bellwether Report 2026 found that 62% of small and mid-sized firms said they had grown compared with three or four years earlier. 

But it does mean that the competition around them has changed. 

Larger groups can benefit from centralised recruitment teams, highly visible career pages, established graduate programmes, recognised consumer brands and the resources to promote opportunities nationally. 

They can also recruit across several locations and, in some cases, offer candidates a wider range of internal career paths. 

For a regional firm, the risk is not necessarily that its opportunities are less attractive. It is that potential candidates never understand what those opportunities involve. 

Brand is not simply the logo above the door

When candidates talk about wanting to join a recognised brand, they are not always making a decision based on prestige alone. 

A strong employer brand can act as shorthand for several things: 

• structured training 
• modern systems and technology 
• visible career progression 
• financial stability 
• strong case pipelines 
• competitive benefits 
• opportunities to specialise 
• experience that will be recognised by future employers 

The SRA’s 2025 law firm workforce data found that younger lawyers are more heavily represented within larger firms. This does not prove that brand alone attracts them, but it does show the scale of the recruitment challenge facing smaller practices. 

A regional firm cannot assume that candidates will already know about its culture, the quality of its work or the careers people have built there. 

Those points need to be demonstrated. 

This means showing real examples of progression, introducing the lawyers who have developed within the firm and explaining how junior employees are trained. It means being clear about the type of cases someone will handle and the level of responsibility they can expect. 

A candidate should not have to reach the final interview before discovering the strongest reasons to join the firm. 

Turn existing strengths into a clear proposition 

Many independent firms already offer things that lawyers say they want. 

A junior clinical negligence lawyer may have more direct contact with partners, greater exposure to complex work and a clearer understanding of how a case progresses from the initial enquiry through to resolution. 

Someone working within a smaller team may be given more opportunity to develop client relationships, attend conferences with counsel or contribute to business development. 

The culture may also be less hierarchical and decisions may be made more quickly. 

These are meaningful advantages, but only when they are genuinely available and clearly communicated. 

Broad claims such as “friendly team”, “excellent progression” or “great culture” are unlikely to distinguish one firm from another. Candidates will want to know what those claims mean in practice. 

A more useful proposition might explain: 

• how frequently junior lawyers work directly with partners 
• when they begin managing their own files 
• what supervision is available 
• how the firm supports qualification and accreditation 
• examples of people who have progressed internally 
• the type and value of cases handled by the team 
• how performance and salary are reviewed 
• what the route towards senior associate or partnership looks like 

The objective is not to make the firm sound bigger than it is of couse. It is to make the benefits of its size more visible. 

Flexibility needs to be more than a line in the advert 

Working patterns remain one of the most influential parts of a legal professional’s decision to move. 

According to the Law Society’s 2026 guidance on flexible working, access to flexible working stands at 90% across the profession. However, this falls to 80% within small firms and 84% among younger solicitors. 

For regional firms, flexibility can therefore be a genuine recruitment advantage, particularly where national competitors have introduced more prescriptive office attendance. 

The important point is clarity. 

Advertising a position as hybrid without explaining what that means can create uncertainty. Candidates want to understand how often they are expected in the office, whether the arrangement changes during probation and whether there is any flexibility around where those days are worked. 

Firms should also distinguish between a working pattern that is available in theory and one that is supported culturally. 

If employees are permitted to work from home but feel that doing so will affect progression, visibility or access to better work, the policy is unlikely to support retention. 

Flexibility does not have to mean unrestricted remote working. Clinical negligence and personal injury teams still need effective supervision, collaboration and opportunities for junior lawyers to learn from more experienced colleagues. Sensitive client work may also benefit from face-to-face contact. 

A successful policy starts with the requirements of the role rather than an assumption that every employee must work in the same way. 

Is geography unnecessarily limiting the talent pool? 

Location remains a particular challenge for specialist PI and clinical negligence recruitment. 

Experienced lawyers are not distributed evenly across the country. A firm may find an excellent candidate who lives beyond a comfortable daily commute but could perform the role effectively through a combination of remote work and planned office attendance. 

That does not mean geography should never matter. A role involving regular local hearings, in-person client appointments or close supervision may require someone to be present more frequently. 

The question is whether the attendance requirement reflects the work itself or simply the way the firm has always operated. 

Before rejecting candidates on location, firms could consider: 

• which responsibilities genuinely require office attendance 
• whether team meetings could be grouped into planned office days 
• whether supervision can be delivered effectively through a mixture of online and in-person contact 
• whether a more experienced lawyer needs the same pattern as a trainee or paralegal 
• whether occasional travel would be workable for the right candidate 
• whether another office could provide a practical base 

A rigid location policy can dramatically reduce the available talent pool, whilst a carefully designed hybrid model can allow a firm to recruit more widely without losing the benefits of team connection and supervision. 

There is also a balance to strike. LawCare has highlighted the risk of isolation within hybrid legal teams, particularly where lawyers lack meaningful contact and a sense of belonging. 

The answer is not necessarily more compulsory attendance. It is creating purposeful opportunities for people to work, learn and connect together. 

Build the pipeline rather than waiting for it 

Many firms approach recruitment when an experienced fee earner leaves and an immediate replacement is needed. 

In specialist areas such as clinical negligence, that can mean competing for a relatively small number of candidates who already have the required experience. 

A more sustainable approach involves developing talent earlier. 

This might include creating structured routes for paralegals, trainees and solicitor apprentices, supporting employees through qualification or giving junior lawyers exposure to PI and clinical negligence work before they are expected to specialise. 

Relationships with universities, local law societies and professional organisations can help firms reach potential recruits before they have formed a fixed view of where they want to work. 

The structure around the opportunity is important. Junior candidates will want to know: 

• who will supervise them 
• what training they will receive 
• how their progress will be measured 
• whether the firm has supported others through the same route 
• what position may be available after qualification 
• how salary and responsibility will develop 

Recruiting potential without providing a clear development framework is unlikely to solve the longer-term pipeline problem. 

Retention has to be earned repeatedly 

There was a time when many legal professionals expected to spend a significant part of their career with one firm. 

That expectation is less reliable now. 

In our conversations with candidates, we increasingly meet lawyers who are prepared to move when progression becomes unclear, flexibility changes or their role no longer develops. They do not necessarily begin each position intending to leave after a few years, but neither do they assume that loyalty alone will eventually produce the career they want. 

This means firms cannot focus only on attracting new talent. They also need to understand why established employees might begin listening to other opportunities. 

Pay is part of that conversation, but it is rarely the only factor. 

Experienced lawyers may leave because they cannot see the next step, feel overloaded, want greater autonomy or believe they need to join a larger brand to strengthen their future prospects. 

Regular career conversations can identify these concerns before they become resignations. 

Rather than waiting for an annual appraisal, firms can ask: 

• Is the individual still gaining new experience? 
• Do they understand what they need to achieve to progress? 
• Has their working pattern remained suitable? 
• Is their caseload manageable? 
• Are they receiving enough support? 
• Do they feel recognised within the firm? 
• Are their salary and benefits still competitive? 
• Can they see a long-term future within the team? 

Exit interviews may explain why someone has left of course, but earlier conversations create an opportunity to retain them. 

In PI and clinical negligence work, retention also supports client service. Cases can continue for several years, and continuity of representation can be particularly important to clients who are already dealing with difficult or traumatic circumstances. 

Benefits need to reflect the people the firm wants to recruit 

Larger organisations often publish long benefit lists, but regional firms should not assume they need to replicate every perk. 

Benefits are most effective when they address the practical needs of the workforce. 

For one team, enhanced annual leave or flexible hours may matter most. For another, the strongest offer may involve funded professional memberships, support with qualification, enhanced family leave or a meaningful bonus structure. 

The firm should understand which benefits employees value and which are rarely used. 

It should then communicate the offer clearly. Candidates should not have to ask several times before discovering basic information about annual leave, pension contributions, hybrid working or professional development support. 

Transparency also helps avoid losing candidates later in the process when expectations do not match. 

The recruitment process is part of the employer brand 

A firm can invest in a new website and carefully written careers material, but a slow or unclear recruitment process can quickly undermine that work. 

Candidates form opinions through every interaction. 

They notice whether interviews are organised efficiently, whether the people they meet understand the role and whether feedback arrives when promised. They also notice when the working pattern or responsibilities described during the process differ from the original advert. 

For candidates considering several opportunities, these details can determine which firm appears best organised and most interested in them. 

Regional firms may have an advantage here. With fewer layers of approval, they can often make decisions more quickly and create a more personal recruitment experience. 

That advantage should be used deliberately. 

What can regional PI and clinical negligence firms do now? 

Competing with a large national brand does not require a firm to become one. 

It requires a clearer understanding of what the firm offers and a willingness to adapt where the existing proposition no longer meets the market. 

A practical starting point is to review the following areas:

1. Audit what candidates can currently see

Review the careers section of the website, job adverts, social media and employee reviews. Does the information explain why someone should join, or does it mainly describe what the firm wants from them?

2. Ask current employees why they stay

The most persuasive employer proposition is likely to come from the people already working within the team. Their answers may reveal strengths the leadership team has overlooked. 

3. Make progression specific

Replace general promises with clear examples, development expectations and genuine internal career stories.

4. Review the role before setting the attendance policy

Decide which parts of the position require office attendance, who needs the closest supervision and where flexibility could widen the available talent pool.

5. Compare the full offer with the market

Salary matters, but so do working hours, caseloads, bonus arrangements, annual leave, supervision and the quality of work. Firms need to understand how the complete opportunity compares.

6. Start developing future talent

Create realistic routes for paralegals, trainees, apprentices and lawyers moving from related areas. Explain how they will gain the experience needed to progress.

7. Speak to employees before they start looking

Use regular career and workload conversations to identify retention risks early.

8. Treat recruitment as a two-way process

Candidates are assessing the firm at the same time as the firm is assessing them. Clear communication, timely feedback and consistency matter.

9. Give your recruiter enough to sell the opportunity

A specialist recruiter can help a lesser-known firm compete for attention, particularly with candidates who may never have considered it themselves. 

Make sure they understand more than the job description. Share what makes the team, culture, work, progression and wider opportunity genuinely attractive so they can represent your firm properly in the market. 

Regional firms still have a compelling story to tell 

The growth of larger legal groups has changed the recruitment landscape, but it has not removed the advantages of working within an independent or regional practice. 

Many lawyers still want closer access to decision-makers, meaningful responsibility and the opportunity to build a reputation within a specialist team. 

They may value working for a firm with strong local relationships, a less complicated structure and a genuine interest in the individual behind the CV. 

The challenge is making sure those qualities are visible and supported by modern working practices. 

Brand may open the first door, but the substance of the opportunity will determine whether someone joins and whether they stay. 

At Clayton Legal, we work closely with PI and clinical negligence teams across the country, helping firms understand what candidates are looking for and how their offer compares with the wider market. 

Whether you are struggling to recruit in a particular location, reviewing your approach to hybrid working or thinking about how to build a longer-term talent pipeline, our team can provide an honest view of the market.

Legal careers do not always follow a straight line.

A career break might follow caring responsibilities, illness or recovery, bereavement, relocation, time overseas, further study, travel or a move into another profession. Some legal professionals step away because the timing or working environment is no longer right, while others take an opportunity outside private practice and later decide that they want to return.

The break may last several months or a number of years. You might want to return to the same kind of role, revisit a practice area you previously worked in or explore a different part of the profession altogether.

Whatever your circumstances, time away does not erase the experience you built before leaving. Returning to law can, however, require preparation, flexibility and a realistic understanding of how firms will assess your experience now.

This guide looks at the practical steps you can take when returning to a legal career and what recruiters and law firms are likely to consider during the hiring process.

The regulatory information in this article relates principally to solicitors practising in England and Wales. Other regulated legal professionals should check the current requirements of their own regulator.

Is it realistic to return to law after a career break?

Yes, although the route back will be different for every legal professional.

A firm is likely to consider the length of your break, your previous level of responsibility, the relevance of your earlier experience and how much your area of law has changed. It will also want to understand what kind of role you are seeking, the working arrangements you need and how prepared you are to return to practice.

Someone returning after a relatively short break to the same practice area may be able to move into a role at a similar level. A longer absence, significant changes in legislation or a move into a different specialism may require a more gradual transition.

That could involve additional training, closer supervision, a fixed-term position or accepting a role at a different level initially. None of these should automatically be seen as a backward step. The right position can help you rebuild recent experience, confidence and professional contacts.

Formal return-to-work programmes and returnships are offered by some law firms and public-sector legal employers. They can provide structured training and a supported route back, but they are not the only option. Legal professionals also return through permanent vacancies, fixed-term contracts, part-time roles, in-house positions and opportunities created through their existing networks.

The Law Society’s guidance on returning to law after a career break is a useful starting point. Its Back to Law Ambassadors also share first-hand experiences of returning to the profession.

Why do legal professionals take career breaks?

Career breaks are often discussed almost entirely in the context of maternity leave, but there are many reasons why someone may step away from a legal career.

These can include:

• caring for children, parents or other family members
• managing a health condition or recovering from illness
• relocating within the UK or moving overseas
• bereavement or other significant personal circumstances
• undertaking further study or professional development
• travelling or taking a planned sabbatical
• running a business or working in another sector
• moving into a non-practising, operational or commercial role
• reconsidering the type of legal career they want
• taking time away following redundancy, restructuring or the closure of a firm

A concise, professional explanation will usually be enough when you begin applying for roles. You do not need to make the career break the focus of your application, but you should explain the dates clearly and be ready to discuss why you are now prepared to return.

The emphasis should be on where you are going next rather than apologising for the time you spent away.

Are you returning to the same practice area?

Returning to the area in which you previously developed most of your experience is usually the most straightforward route.

Your earlier technical knowledge, client experience and understanding of the work remain relevant. The main question for an employer will be how current that experience is and what you have done to prepare for your return.

A recruiter or hiring firm may want to know:

• when you last managed matters in that area
• the type and complexity of work you handled
• how independently you worked
• whether you managed a caseload or supervised others
• the kinds of clients you advised
• how the law, procedure or regulatory environment has changed
• what training or professional reading you have completed recently

Do not simply say that you are willing to update your knowledge once you start. Demonstrating that you have already begun the process gives an employer greater confidence in your commitment and readiness.

Can you return to a previous specialism after working in another area?

Returning to an area in which you previously practised can be realistic, particularly where you built meaningful experience in the specialism and your more recent work has given you relevant transferable skills.

For example, time spent in-house may have strengthened your commercial judgement and understanding of client priorities. A move into operations, compliance, professional support or management may have developed your leadership, risk and process skills. Experience in another legal discipline may also be relevant where the two areas share similar clients, procedures or technical knowledge.

The firm will still want to understand why you want to return to the earlier specialism and whether your knowledge is sufficiently current. You should be ready to explain:

• how much experience you previously gained in the area
• why you moved away from it
• what has prompted your return
• which parts of your recent experience are transferable
• how you are updating your technical knowledge
• whether you would consider a period of additional supervision or training

The longer it has been since you practised in that field, the more important this preparation becomes.

Can you change practice area after a career break?

Moving into a completely new practice area is possible, but it is likely to be the most challenging route.

Law firms often recruit experienced legal professionals because they need someone who can take responsibility for matters reasonably quickly. A candidate with several years of post-qualified experience in one area may therefore not automatically be treated as equally experienced in another.

Your qualification date will not change, but employers are also likely to assess the amount of recent and directly relevant experience you can bring to the role.

A complete change may be more achievable where there is a clear connection between your previous work and the new practice area. Relevant client sectors, drafting skills, advocacy, negotiation, case management, regulatory knowledge or business development experience may all help to build that connection.

You may also need to consider:

• entering the new area at a more junior level
• accepting a different salary initially
• undertaking targeted training or study
• gaining experience through a fixed-term or contract position
• looking at an adjacent rather than entirely different specialism
• considering a broader legal, compliance or professional support role

Interest in a practice area is important, but it will rarely be enough on its own. Firms will want evidence that you understand the work and have taken practical steps towards making the transition.

The Law Society also provides guidance for solicitors considering a change in career direction.

Check your regulatory and practising status

Before applying for roles, check your current status through mySRA and establish whether there are any regulatory steps you need to complete.

If you are returning to a position in which you will be practising as a solicitor, you will normally need a current practising certificate. The SRA recommends that solicitors returning after a career break apply for a practising certificate at least 30 days before they intend to start practising, in case there are matters that need to be reviewed.

You should also confirm whether you remain on the roll of solicitors.

Solicitors who do not hold a practising certificate must complete the SRA’s annual process if they wish to remain on the roll. The application window and requirements can change, so check the current SRA guidance on remaining on the roll rather than relying on dates from a previous year.

If your name is no longer on the roll, you may need to apply to be restored before applying for a practising certificate. The process will depend on the circumstances in which your name was removed.

Different requirements may apply to CILEX professionals, licensed conveyancers and other regulated legal practitioners. Check directly with your regulator rather than assuming that your previous authorisation remains current.

Refresh your legal knowledge and professional competence

Solicitors returning after a substantial period away are not required to complete a fixed number of training hours simply because they have taken a career break.

They are, however, expected to reflect on their practice and address any learning and development needs before returning. This includes keeping their understanding of relevant legal, ethical and regulatory obligations up to date.

The SRA’s continuing competence guidance explains that solicitors who have been away from practice should reflect on their needs and complete appropriate learning and development before returning.

Learning could include:

• formal courses and qualifications
• webinars and conferences
• reading legislation, case law and regulatory guidance
• attending specialist practice events
• completing practical systems training
• learning from experienced colleagues or mentors
• reviewing the SRA’s professional standards and competence requirements

Begin by reviewing what has changed in your intended practice area since you last worked in it. This may include:

• legislation and case law
• court rules and procedural requirements
• regulatory guidance and warning notices
• professional conduct obligations
• anti-money laundering requirements
• data protection and information security
• legal technology and case management systems
• client expectations and service delivery
• pricing, billing and commercial pressures

It is also sensible to keep a record of the learning you complete. The SRA does not prescribe one particular format, but it says that recording and evaluating learning can demonstrate the steps taken to maintain competence.

Its guidance on recording and evaluating learning and development includes practical advice, and the SRA also provides learning and development templates.

Being able to show how you identified and addressed your development needs may also be useful during the recruitment and interview process.

Be clear about the kind of legal role you want

A broad search for “anything in law” is unlikely to help you present a convincing case to employers.

Consider the work you want to do, the environment in which you perform best and the aspects of your previous career that you would like to retain.

Think about whether you are looking for:

• a return to private practice
• an in-house legal position
• a specialist or broader regional firm
• a role with a traditional caseload
• a professional support or knowledge role
• a compliance, risk or operational position
• a contract or fixed-term route back
• a part-time or flexible opportunity

You should also consider your preferred location, salary expectations, working pattern and appetite for management or business development.

The clearer you are, the easier it becomes for a recruiter to identify realistic opportunities and explain your experience to a prospective employer.

How should you explain a career break on your CV?

Do not leave an unexplained gap and hope that an employer will overlook it. A short, factual explanation is usually more effective.

For example:

Career break | January 2023 to July 2026

Planned career break following relocation overseas. Continued to monitor developments in employment law through professional updates and online learning. Now permanently based in the UK and seeking to return to an employment law role.

Alternatively:

Career break | September 2022 to August 2026

Took time away from private practice due to caring responsibilities. Now ready to return to legal work and have recently completed training covering developments in private client law, professional conduct and anti-money laundering requirements.

The explanation does not need to be lengthy. It should tell the reader what the period was, provide appropriate context and make your current intention clear.

Where relevant, include activities undertaken during the break, such as:

• consultancy or freelance projects
• voluntary or trustee responsibilities
• study and professional training
• running a business
• teaching, mentoring or community work
• keeping up with legal developments
• work completed in another profession or sector

Avoid stretching unrelated activities to make them sound like legal experience. Instead, explain honestly which transferable skills they helped you develop.

Be realistic about level, salary and recent experience

One of the most important parts of a successful return is understanding how the current market is likely to assess your experience.

Your previous title and qualification date remain part of your professional history. A firm may not, however, view several years away from practice as equivalent to several years of recent fee-earning experience.

That does not mean you must automatically start again. It means the appropriate level will depend on the role, the length of your break, the relevance of your earlier experience and how much support you may initially need.

A recruiter should be honest with you about:

• how firms are likely to view your experience
• the level at which you are most likely to secure interviews
• current salary expectations
• which employers may be receptive to returners
• whether a permanent, temporary or fixed-term route is most realistic
• whether an adjacent role could provide a stronger route back
• where additional training or supervision may be expected

Taking a slightly different role initially can sometimes create a better long-term return than holding out for an exact replication of the position you left.

Discuss working arrangements clearly

You may be returning with different priorities from those you had before your career break.

Flexible working can include part-time hours, different start and finish times, compressed hours, job sharing, remote work or a hybrid arrangement.

Anyone with the legal status of an employee has a statutory right to request flexible working from their first day of employment. This is a right to make a request rather than a guarantee that every proposed arrangement will be agreed.

The Acas guidance on statutory flexible working requests explains the current position, including who is eligible and how a request should be considered.

The statutory right applies once you are employed. When considering a new role, it is therefore sensible to establish the expected working pattern before accepting an offer rather than relying on a future request.

A recruiter can raise practical questions with the firm, clarify where flexibility exists and help avoid misunderstandings later.

Be clear about what you genuinely need and where you can be flexible. A precise proposal is easier for an employer to consider than a general request for “some flexibility”.

Prepare for the questions you are likely to be asked

A career break is likely to form part of the interview discussion, but it should not dominate the entire conversation.

Prepare concise answers to the following questions:

• Why did you take the career break?
• Why are you ready to return now?
• Why are you interested in this role and practice area?
• How have you updated your legal knowledge?
• What experience from before or during the break is most relevant?
• What level of responsibility are you ready to take on?
• Are there any areas in which you would initially need support?
• What working arrangements are you seeking?

Being open about areas that need refreshing is not necessarily a weakness. A realistic understanding of your development needs can be more reassuring than claiming that nothing has changed during your time away.

Rebuild your professional network

You do not need to wait until you see the perfect vacancy before beginning your return.

Reconnect with former colleagues, professional contacts and people working in your intended practice area. Attend relevant Law Society, regional legal or specialist practice events. Update your LinkedIn profile and follow developments within the firms and sectors that interest you.

The Career Returners resources for lawyers also include return-to-work advice, professional networks and examples from legal professionals who have successfully resumed their careers.

These conversations can help you understand how the market has changed, identify knowledge gaps and become more confident discussing your experience.

How can a legal recruiter help you return to work?

A specialist legal recruiter can give you a current view of the market before you begin making applications.

At Clayton Legal, we can look at your previous experience, the length and nature of your career break and the type of role you now want. We can then help you assess where your background is most likely to be relevant.

That may involve identifying firms open to experienced returners, exploring opportunities in a previous specialism or considering adjacent roles that use your wider skills.

We will also be honest where a direct return at the same level may be difficult. Understanding that early allows you to make informed decisions about salary, seniority, working arrangements and the steps needed to rebuild recent experience.

Your career break is part of your professional story, but it does not need to define the rest of your career.

If you are considering returning to law, moving back into a previous practice area or exploring where your legal experience could take you next, speak to the Clayton Legal team for a confidential conversation.

Frequently asked questions about returning to law

Can I return to law after a long career break?

Yes. Legal professionals have returned after breaks lasting several years, although a longer break is likely to require more preparation.

Employers will consider your earlier experience alongside your current knowledge, readiness and expectations. You may also need to be flexible about the role, level or route through which you return.

Do I need a practising certificate before returning as a solicitor?

You will normally need a current practising certificate if the position requires you to practise as a solicitor.

Check your mySRA account, confirm whether you remain on the roll and review the current SRA guidance before agreeing a start date. The SRA recommends applying for a practising certificate at least 30 days before you intend to start practising following a career break.

Do I need to complete CPD before returning?

The SRA does not currently prescribe a fixed number of continuing competence or CPD hours.

You must identify and address the learning and development needed to perform your role competently, including keeping your legal, ethical and regulatory knowledge up to date.

Can I move back into a practice area I worked in previously?

Yes, particularly where you developed meaningful experience in that area.

The firm will want to understand how long it has been since you last practised, how you have updated your knowledge and whether you initially need additional supervision.

Can I change to a completely different area of law?

It is possible, but it may involve entering at a different level, completing further training or demonstrating a strong connection between your existing skills and the new specialism.

A move into an adjacent area may be more realistic than a complete change, particularly where a firm needs someone who can manage work independently.

Should I include a career break on my CV?

Yes. Give the period a clear heading, include the dates and provide a concise explanation.

You do not need to make the break the focus of your CV, but leaving a significant period unexplained may create unnecessary questions.

Can I request flexible working when I return?

Anyone with the legal status of an employee has a statutory right to request flexible working from their first day of employment.

This does not guarantee that the exact arrangement requested will be agreed. When applying for a new role, it is sensible to discuss any essential working arrangements before accepting an offer.

August is often the month when the out-of-office messages are on, diaries are a little quieter and many of us finally get the chance to step away from work for more than a long weekend. The difficulty, of course, comes when the holiday ends.

Returning to work after a holiday can bring a familiar sense of reluctance. The slower mornings and freedom from your usual routine are replaced by a full inbox, upcoming deadlines and the knowledge that there is probably a fair amount waiting for you.

For legal professionals, that return can feel particularly abrupt. Client matters continue to move, court dates do not disappear and even the best handover cannot always prevent the first few days back from feeling slightly overwhelming.

In most cases, that feeling is temporary. Once you have caught up, settled back into your routine and stopped comparing your desk with wherever you spent the previous week, work begins to feel normal again.

Sometimes, however, a holiday gives you enough distance to recognise that it is not simply the holiday ending that you are unhappy about. It is the role you are returning to.

So, how can you tell the difference between the usual post-holiday blues and a more genuine need to reassess your legal career?

A Temporary Slump?

There is nothing unusual about wishing you had another few days away, particularly if your holiday gave you more time with family and friends or the rare opportunity to switch off completely.

Moving from very few demands on your time to a busy working day requires an adjustment, even when you generally enjoy your role. You may feel tired, distracted or less motivated than usual, while a large number of unread emails can make the return seem worse than it really is.

Before making any dramatic decisions, give yourself a little time to settle back in. A difficult Monday morning is not necessarily evidence that you need a new job, just as feeling refreshed by a holiday does not mean your career has suddenly gone off course.

If your mood lifts once you have caught up and found your rhythm again, the chances are that you were simply experiencing a short-lived post-holiday dip.

However, if the same concerns remain after the suitcases have been unpacked and the tan has started to fade, it may be worth paying closer attention to them.

The Perspective That Time Away Can Bring

One of the benefits of taking a proper break is that it creates space between you and the day-to-day demands of your job.

When you are dealing with client work, meetings, targets and deadlines, it can be difficult to step back and consider how you actually feel about your role. Most of your energy is focused on what needs to be done next, rather than whether the wider direction of your career is still right for you.

A holiday can change that. Once the immediate noise of work has quietened, you may find yourself thinking about matters that have been pushed to one side for months.

Perhaps you have begun to question whether your current role still offers the progression you expected. You may be wondering whether your salary reflects the responsibilities you have taken on, or whether the firm’s working arrangements still suit your life outside work.

You may also have noticed how difficult it was to switch off in the first place. If much of your holiday was spent checking emails, worrying about matters or feeling guilty about being unavailable, the issue may be less about returning to work and more about the expectations or working habits that make it difficult to step away properly. It is a familiar challenge within the legal profession, which is why LawCare’s recent guidance on switching off on holiday includes practical advice on arranging cover, managing contact and setting clearer boundaries before annual leave begins.

None of these thoughts automatically means that it is time to move. They can, however, provide a useful starting point for reviewing where you are and what you want from the next stage of your legal career.

Preparing for Your Return

Although you cannot always control what will be waiting when you get back, you can make the transition a little easier.

Where possible, avoid returning late the evening before you are due back at work. Giving yourself some time to unpack, catch up on sleep and mentally prepare for the week ahead can make a noticeable difference.

Once you are back, resist the urge to respond to everything immediately. Start by reviewing your diary and identifying any genuinely urgent matters before working through the rest of your inbox. It may also be worth speaking to a colleague or manager to establish whether priorities changed while you were away.

Most importantly, accept that you are unlikely to clear everything on your first morning. Trying to compensate for having taken annual leave by working through lunch or staying late simply reinforces the idea that taking time off creates a problem that needs to be repaid.

A more measured return allows you to regain control of your workload without turning the first few days back into an unnecessary test of endurance.

A Chance to Revisit Your Career Goals

Once you have dealt with the immediate return, it can be useful to revisit the plans you had for your career before the holiday.

Career planning is not something that should only happen when you qualify or begin looking for your first legal role. Priorities change over time, as do firms, teams and personal circumstances, which means a role that suited you a few years ago may not necessarily be the right one now.

Consider what you had hoped to achieve by this point and whether you are making reasonable progress towards it. If you expected to be taking on more complex work, moving towards promotion or developing a particular specialism, is that beginning to happen?

It is equally important to think about whether your own definition of progress has changed. For some people, the next step will be a more senior title or greater earning potential. For others, it may be better flexibility, a shorter commute, more supportive management or the ability to undertake work they find more rewarding.

There is no single correct version of career progression. What matters is whether your current role is still moving you towards the working life you want, rather than the one you assumed you should want several years ago.

Is It the Holiday Ending, or the Job You Are Returning To?

The clearest way to distinguish between post-holiday blues and a deeper issue is to look at whether the concerns were already present before you went away.

If you regularly feel anxious on Sunday evenings, struggle with an unmanageable workload or feel increasingly disconnected from the work you are doing, the holiday probably did not create those feelings. It simply gave you enough distance to notice them properly.

You may also find yourself questioning whether you feel valued within the firm, whether you have a constructive relationship with your manager and whether there is a realistic route to progression. Culture matters too, particularly when the way a firm operates does not match the values or working style that are important to you.

Salary and benefits are naturally part of that assessment, but they are rarely the only considerations. A higher salary may not compensate for consistently long hours, limited autonomy or a culture in which taking annual leave feels difficult.

Flexibility has also become a much more important part of career decisions. This does not only mean working from home. It can include working hours, start and finish times, compressed hours or other arrangements that make a role more manageable alongside life outside work. Flexibility has also become a much more important part of career decisions. This does not only mean working from home. It can include working hours, start and finish times, compressed hours or other arrangements that make a role more manageable alongside life outside work. The CIPD’s guidance on flexible working notes that a lack of flexibility can prompt people to look for another job or even leave a sector altogether.

All employees currently have the legal right to request flexible working from their first day in a role, although an employer can still refuse a request where there is a valid business reason. Even so, the formal right to ask does not always tell you how genuinely open or flexible a particular firm will be in practice, which is why it is worth looking closely at both policy and culture.

Could Things Improve Where You Are?

Realising that something needs to change does not necessarily mean that you need to resign.

Depending on the issue, a conversation with your manager may be enough to improve matters. If your concerns relate to workload, development, salary, flexibility or the type of work you are handling, it is worth being clear about what would make a meaningful difference.

Rather than approaching the conversation with a general sense that you are unhappy, think about the specific outcome you would like. That might be a clearer development plan, more exposure to a particular type of matter, a salary review or a change to your working pattern.

The response you receive will also tell you something. A constructive conversation may reassure you that there is room for your role to evolve, while repeated promises without action may confirm that the situation is unlikely to change.

It is easy to remain in a familiar role because leaving feels like a much bigger step, but staying should still be an active decision. There is a difference between choosing to remain because the role continues to work for you and staying because considering anything else feels uncomfortable.

When It May Be Time to Explore the Market

If you have allowed yourself time to settle back in, considered what needs to change and cannot see a realistic way forward with your current firm, it may be time to explore what else is available.

That does not mean immediately applying for every legal job you see. In fact, the most useful first step is often simply to understand the market better.

You may want to find out what roles are available within your practice area and region, how your salary compares with current market levels and which firms can offer the progression, flexibility or culture you are looking for.

A conversation with a legal recruitment specialist should help you answer those questions without putting pressure on you to move. It can also give you access to opportunities that may not be widely advertised, as well as more context around the firms recruiting and what they are genuinely like to work for.

At Clayton Legal, our consultants work within defined regional markets and legal specialisms, which allows them to offer advice based on the firms, practice areas and opportunities they know. That means the conversation can begin with what is not working for you and what you would like to be different, rather than simply matching your job title with the nearest vacancy.

Exploring your options does not commit you to leaving. It may confirm that your current position remains the right one, or it may show you that there are roles which better reflect where you are now and where you would like your career to go.

Post-Holiday Blues or Something More?

Returning to work after a holiday is unlikely to be the highlight of anyone’s summer, and a few days of wishing you were still away is usually nothing to worry about.

However, time away can offer a clearer view of problems that are easier to ignore when you are caught up in the working week. If your reluctance to return is connected to concerns that existed long before the holiday, it is worth taking them seriously.

Start by giving yourself time to settle back in, then look honestly at what is making you unhappy and whether it can be improved. If the answer is no, finding out what else is available may be a more useful next step than continuing to hope that things will feel different.

A career decision does not need to be made on your first morning back. Equally, you do not need to dismiss what the holiday may have helped you recognise.

About Clayton Legal

For nearly 30 years, Clayton Legal has supported legal professionals with their careers and helped law firms build their teams through specialist legal recruitment.

Our consultants recruit across defined regions and practice areas, providing candidates with honest advice, current market insight and access to opportunities that reflect their experience and longer-term ambitions.

If returning to work after a holiday has left you questioning whether your current role is still right for you, speak to our team for a confidential conversation about the legal jobs market and the options available.

Call 01772 259 121, email enquiries@clayton-legal.co.uk or view our latest legal opportunities.