ALPMA has officially opened the 2026 Australian Legal Industry HR Issues & Salary Survey, inviting firms across the country to contribute to the profession’s most comprehensive benchmarking study. Participation is open now and closes on 27 February 2026, with no extensions this year.
This annual research remains a critical resource for understanding how Australian firms are responding to shifting workforce expectations, salary pressures, and the ongoing evolution of legal practice. In 2025, 345 law offices employing almost 10,000 staff took part — making it the largest and most reliable dataset of its kind, built directly from law firm submissions, not data solely from recruiters.
Firms that complete the 2026 survey will receive free access to the full report and interactive salary tables (valued at $2,200), available in April.
What last year’s findings told us
The 2025 results highlighted several defining trends shaping the Australian legal workforce:
Australian legal industry wage growth increased by an average of 4.1%, continuing to outpace both national wage growth (3.2%) and inflation (2.4%).
4.1%
Legal Industry
3.2%
National
The average Australian law firm employed 38 staff and 24 fee earners in 2025—levels that have remained steady since 2023. Although 56% of firms expected growth in 2024, only 39% reported actual increases.
Increased Headcount
Predicted an Increase
In 2025, the ratio of fee earners to secretarial staff rose to 4.46, and fee earners per business support role increased to 1.94. This suggests a growing focus on digital self-sufficiency and cost efficiency across firms.
4.05 → 4.46
Increase in fee earners per secretarial support person
1.77 → 1.94
Increase in fee earners per business support role
Progress on diversity and inclusion remains uneven and slow. While women represent 63% of solicitors, only 28% of equity partners and 39% of board members are female—signifying persistent barriers to leadership advancement.
Similarly, gender pay gap awareness is rising, but action remains limited. While 44% of firms believe a gender pay gap exists industry-wide, only 27% conducted a pay gap analysis in the previous year.
Results from the 2025 ALPMA Australian Legal Industry HR Issues & Salary Survey.
Why this research matters
ALPMA’s annual salary research provides a unique, independent dataset that gives law firm leaders a clear, factual picture of what is happening across the Australian industry.
For individual firms, the survey provides:
- Evidence‑based remuneration benchmarking to support salary reviews, budgeting and retention strategies
- Clarity on market movement, including wage growth, bonus practices and benefits trends
- Insight into staffing ratios and role design, helping firms plan for sustainable workloads and modern support structures
- Visibility of recruitment pressures, enabling more informed decisions about hiring, outsourcing and capability development
- A realistic view of competitor behaviour, rather than relying on anecdotal or vendor‑driven information
For the broader legal industry, the dataset plays a critical role in:
- Tracking long‑term workforce trends, including gender representation, hybrid work, wellbeing and career pathways
- Identifying emerging HR challenges that affect firms of all sizes
- Strengthening transparency, helping firms benchmark fairly and reducing information asymmetry in the employment market
- Building a shared evidence base that supports better decision‑making across the profession
Crucially, ALPMA leverages the research insights each year to identify capability gaps, emerging HR pressures and areas where firms may need practical support, shaping our learning and development programming.
The value of the salary tables grows with every additional firm that participates. A larger, more diverse dataset ensures the findings accurately reflect the realities of Australian legal practice, from sole practitioners to national firms.
What’s new this year
The 2026 Salary Survey includes two crucial changes that will impact participants.
Improved Format
Most participants will be able to complete the 2026 survey faster than ever, benefiting from major improvements to the format:
- Gender Pay Gap questions replaced with real salary averages by gender, meaning the latest report will indicate true gender pay disparities across the country regardless of firms’ own perceptions within their own firm and the industry as a whole.
- Firms with multiple offices can submit all their salary data in just one submission, without needing to repeat any questions. For larger firms, this will be a considerable time saver!
Fixed Deadline
This improved format for 2026 is poised to make submissions faster and easier, so we’ve aimed to release the salary tables as early as possible! To meet this goal to release salary data in April, the deadline for participation will not be extended beyond Friday, 27 February 2026.
Firms who have registered by the deadline will receive a small grace period into Monday, 2 March to finalise their data.
This year’s survey continues to collect detailed salary information, including lowest, highest and average salaries for each role. It also examines employment benefits, bonuses, recruitment expectations and salary projections for the coming year.
The survey takes around 30–60 minutes to complete once participants have collated their data, depending on firm size, and participating firms receive the full report and interactive salary tables free of charge—a resource valued at AUD $2,200.
The HR Issues & Salary Survey report will provide up-to-date information on the state of the Australian legal industry, its people and remuneration, including:
- current salary data – from Graduates to Equity Partners (and everything in between);
- salary data shown by firm size and region;
- insights into anticipated salary increases & bonus structures;
- insight into current & future issues in HR;
- defined staffing profiles & roles (70+ positions);
- firm & individual benefits;
- staffing ratio benchmarks;
- recruitment intentions for the coming year; and
- other entitlements on offer at firms.
The confidential online survey takes 30-60 minutes to complete once you’ve gathered your data. You do not want to miss out on the opportunity to benchmark your firm against 350+ law offices across the country!
About the Research
About the Legal Industry HR Issues & Salary Survey
The 2026 ALPMA Australian HR Issues & Salary Survey report will be the most comprehensive, independent report on salaries for all roles at Australian law firms.
In the latest survey, 345 law offices from across Australia provided comprehensive information about salaries, benefits and bonuses they pay for lawyers, management and administrative staff. The report uses actual salaries paid to employees to describe the ‘typical’ salary for more than 70 roles at law firms. Salaries for each role are also broken down by size of firm and by location, allowing companies to benchmark their remuneration strategy for each role with similar firms.
The report also offers insight into the critical HR issues and challenges facing law firms, as well as anticipated salary movements, recruitment plans and staff employment arrangements. Since 2019, the survey included questions about staff gender by roles and gender pay gap perceptions.
The ALPMA HR Issues & Salary Survey reports are provided free of charge to all participating firms. Non-participating firms can purchase a copy of the Australian report online for AUD2,200 or AUD550 for ALPMA members.
The research is conducted for ALPMA by Survey Matters, an independent research consultancy, to the highest standards.
Find out more: www.alpma.com.au/salary-survey
About ALPMA
The Australasian Legal Practice Management Association (ALPMA) is the peak body representing managers and leaders working within law firms, legal departments or government agencies. ALPMA provides an authoritative voice on issues relevant to legal practice management across the industry. Members of ALPMA provide professional management services to legal practices (et al) in areas of financial management, strategic management, technology, human resources, facilities and operational management, marketing and information services and technology.
ALPMA’s learning and development framework includes pillars covering finance, operations, information technology, human resources, knowledge management, business development, marketing, project management to name just a few. They also regularly provide content on topical challenges facing the industry today including legal technology, cyber security, anti-money laundering, regulatory updates, ESG and sustainability.
ALPMA also produces benchmarking reports for members including the various Salary Surveys conducted across Australia, New Zealand and for the Intellectual Property & Trademark sector, Financial Performance Benchmarking surveys (AU and NZ), annual Changing Legal Landscape report, Cyber Security report and our first State of Sustainability Priorities in the Legal Industry report.
ALPMA has over 3,000 members which includes individuals and corporate subscribers (law firms, legal departments and government agencies) across Australia, New Zealand and various other countries.
For more information about ALPMA, visit www.alpma.com.au
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Media Contact
Emma Elliott
Chief Executive Officer
Australasian Legal Practice Management Association
M 0402 471 659
E e.elliott@alpma.com.au
W www.alpma.com.au
