The Datum Report

Occupation 4212 · Administrative and secretarial occupations

Legal secretaries

Half of full-time legal secretaries in the UK earn more than £26,968 a year, and half earn less.

Legal secretaries file and maintain legal and other records, transcribe notes and dictation into typewritten form and perform other routine clerical tasks in legal practices.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements, although employers may expect candidate to possess a legal secretarial qualification. Entrants to professional legal courses typically require GCSEs/ S grades or equivalent qualifications. NVQs/SVQs in Administration are available at levels 2, 3 and 4.

What the work involves

• types letters and legal documents such as wills and contracts
• maintains court and clients’ records, organises diaries and arranges appointments
• answers enquiries and directs clients to appropriate experts
• attends meetings and keeps records of proceedings
• delivers and collects documents
• sorts and files correspondence and carries out general clerical work

Also called

Legal administrator · Legal clerk · Legal secretary · Secretary (legal services)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for legal secretaries, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 9 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Company secretaries and administrators · Medical secretaries · Personal assistants and other secretaries · Receptionists · School secretaries · Typists and related keyboard occupations