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.