In this rapidly shifting market, accessing up-to-date and robust, legal-market-specific compensation data and insight is needed more than ever. This annual research helps guide the salary, bonus and benefits strategies you need to attract and retain the best talent.

This survey is conducted alongside Lamp House Strategy, a legal insights business.  We have added our industry expertise to the design and included new and emerging business services roles as well as questions on approaches to bonuses, pensions, benefits, business ratios, recruitment and more to ensure that this a survey you will want to be part of.  The survey findings will allow you to access benchmarking about mainstream and specialist roles as well as being able to drill into your peer group data and access the data outputs interactively

September – Information sharing workshop for new clients.

11th October – Deadline for sign ups.

8th November – Deadline for data submission.

w/c 13th January – Benchmarking and peer group data.

w/c 17th February – Market Report.

w/c 10th March – Networking meeting.

“Totum was a pleasure to work with, consistently going the extra mile to meet our needs, and delivering a clear and yet highly detailed end-product that has genuinely supported our benchmarking this year. The data-rich findings combined with Totum’s deep industry knowledge has made Totum’s Reward Survey an invaluable addition to our Reward management information.” 

Sarah Underhill, Head of Reward, Osborne Clarke

“As a US-based global law firm, we find great value in accessing Totum’s Business Services reward survey. This survey offers statistically reliable data, drawing from relevant participants who consistently contribute year after year. The survey’s various options, such as our peer group, regional breakdowns, city-specific data, and insights specific to London, prove immensely useful. Additionally, the survey includes data on legal-specific business services roles, which is not readily available elsewhere. The flexibility to use the data according to our needs is a significant advantage. Moreover, it presents an excellent opportunity to assess the total reward value proposition, encompassing both compensation and benefits, making it a valuable resource overall. We will be participating again for our 3rd year.”

Arnold Austria, Director of Global Staff Compensation, Latham & Watkins

“The Totum Reward Survey has proven immensely valuable, providing a thorough breakdown of all business services functions. As we continue to grow our presence in the UK, Totum’s benchmarking data split across the UK, London and the regions has also been immensely helpful as part of our employee value proposition. Ogier fully intends to participate again next year, acknowledging the importance of accessing annual benchmarking data and insights.”

Carolyn Ferguson, Head of Reward and Employee Value Proposition, Ogier

“The Totum Reward Survey has been a positive experience. The process is straightforward, and the initial feedback and information is really interesting. We are very pleased to be part of this project.” 

Ben Staples, HR Manager, Birketts

The Totum Business Services survey stands out as the most comprehensive salary survey available for business services within the legal sector. Taking part in the survey feels personal. We were encouraged to contribute to the design and the post-survey support we received was exceptional. The swift turnaround time from submission to delivery ensures that the data remains current and valuable, particularly when presenting to the board shortly after submission. It’s been invaluable for our business services teams, providing accurate pay data for our roles across different regions. We’re thrilled to see more firms joining the research each year!

Kirsty Evans, Head of HR Operations, Michelmores

Our participation in Totum’s Business Services Reward Survey 2023 has certainly been worthwhile. It has provided us with a rich set of data, both quantitative and qualitative, on the full range of Business Services roles within comparable law firms. This, together with the well-focused written report, has proven incredibly insightful and helpful in carrying out our benchmarking process this year. The survey process was clear and well-administered – simple to follow, secure and based on a robust methodology. Where needed, support was responsive and thorough. Overall, the survey’s success reflected Totum and Lamphouse Strategy’s excellent understanding of the legal sector and Business Services roles within law firms. Thank you!

Daniel Aked, Reward & Operations Manager, RPC

As a long-time user of the more traditional, consulting firm pay surveys, I’m always sceptical with use of ‘new survey’ sources – happily I need not have had concern. I’m genuinely impressed with the survey and the resulting report and happy to recommend it to my IP client. The survey is of an excellent standard, and easy to match roles into. The report is comprehensive and highly useable.

David Chambers, Reward Consultant, Trademark & Patent Firm

This is your chance to participate in this cutting-edge research and consequently access a wealth of intelligence on reward mechanisms at a time of significant market change and uncertainty. This will be our most comprehensive survey yet of salaries, bonus and benefits agreed across business services functions and roles in the legal sector.

 There are many reasons to get involved.

• Easy to use format
  As a participant, this year’s survey makes it easier than ever for you to input data and receive comprehensive analysis of developments in the salary and bonus market.
• Industry expertise
  The research capitalises on Totum’s extensive market knowledge to cover generalist, specialist, and new and emerging roles, across all business services functions and at all levels of seniority. This ensures roles are benchmarked appropriately.
• Rapidly shifting market
  Our findings will give you access to up-to-date and robust, legal-market-specific compensation data and insight. With questions including approaches to bonuses, pensions, benefits, business services, ratios, recruitment and more, the report will help you to respond to latest market shifts to help you attract and retain the right talent.
• *Benchmarking tool
  Use our research to compare your compensation and reward strategy to those at similar firms, helping you to hone and refine your approach to securing the best candidates.
• Easy process
  We will provide you with an Excel template in which to drop all roles and compensation information, which we will then analyse alongside the responses to a questionnaire which we will ask you to complete.
• Expert contributors
  We work with a panel of firms annually to ensure that the content is tailored to deliver the information that is needed right now, ensuring outputs of significant value to you and your firm. 
• One stop shop
  With findings straight from the market, it saves you invaluable time compiling your own information from different sources.
• Consistent methodology
  The research combines the expertise in analytical process of our partners, Lamp House Strategy, with our intimate understanding of business services functions in the sector, to ensure a rigorous approach to comparing job bands/levels and grades with external pay levels – delivering reliable, trusted and easily-understood output.
• Actionable insights
  We will use the reward survey to bring together the market via a follow-up meeting to debate the trends and explore our findings. As a participant, you will be invited to join the conversation and apply the research to real-world decision-making.

*Benchmarking will be subject to competition law and the greater value in this will result in the largest participation by firms.  Peer groups cannot be guaranteed.

To be involved and access the highest quality of information, insights and the full set of results, Sarah Broad, Totum’s Head of Marketing at sarah.broad@totumpartners.com

You will be required to sign a commissioning schedule to participate.

When signing up to participate we will request 10 peer firms you are most interested in comparing your results against. As we recruit participants for the study we will try to ensure your peer firms are involved.

October 2024.

We have made participation an easier process – upon confirmation of your participation Lamp House Strategy will provide you with an Excel template in which to drop all roles and compensation data before securely returning to Lamp House Strategy. These results will then be analysed and aggregated alongside responses to a questionnaire (the Qualtrics survey) which will be electronically distributed to you along with the Excel template.

For individual roles, the intention is that these will be mapped into departmental bandings which may contain multiple ‘specific’ roles – and it is these bandings which will be reported back on as averages rather than any highly specific job titles to avoid that level of direct attribution. There will also be a level of sense-checking the volume of roles we have within bandings in the event that we still only have very small numbers which could risk identification. This will be the principle of the approach to aggregating, but the number of participating firms / the overall volume of data we receive back will (to an extent) dictate how we need to approach the aggregation to ensure we are not risking identification.

Only Lamp House Strategy employees will have access to the data. This is limited to a small group of 4-5 individuals who are administering the project who will take appropriate measures to keep data secure and private.

At the conclusion of the project and where possible, Lamp House Strategy will provide your firm with a benchmarking spreadsheet enabling you to compare your own firm’s submissions with the aggregated values of a nominated peer group of firms. Peer group aggregation will require a minimum of five nominated and participating firms to be possible. Where this is not possible Lamp House Strategy will advise on the availability of alternative benchmarks but cannot guarantee their availability.

Alongside this output, an overall market trends report will be produced and made available to all participating firms.

Please also see the question ‘What is Totum’s Reward Survey event?’

November 2024.

The UK market spreadsheets and your peer report will be available in January 2025. 

Totum’s comprehensive report which adds commentary and insights to the data and covers salaries, bonuses, benefits, other living payments, recruitment, diversity, equity and inclusion will be available in February 2025.

Yes, we charge a fee to ensure we can deliver the highest quality and depth of content. Please contact sarah.broad@totumpartners.com for more details.

Lamp House Strategy Ltd will directly receive and process all relevant data from participating firms. required to deliver the ‘Business Services Reward Survey’. – the data will not be processed for any other reason outside of the scope of the project. Lamp House Strategy Ltd will require the following actions to be completed:

• Completion of an Excel template containing all relevant roles including salary information for each role
• Completion of a separate salary benchmarking questionnaire

The Excel template will be provided by Lamp House Strategy with instruction to return the completed template via a secure Microsoft SharePoint site with restricted access, which will be securely stored in Lamp House Strategy Ltd’s Office365 Cloud environment within the UK. Lamp House strategy will provide any project deliverables back to your firm via the same secure channel.

The salary benchmarking questionnaire, Qualtrics, will be provided via email using a unique and secure survey link with responses returned directly to Lamp House Strategy Ltd. The analytical software is securely hosted on AWS and located in the EU (Germany).

We have used a standard and consistent methodology. We have also worked with a panel of firms and, alongside our intimate understanding of business services functions in the sector, we can ensure a rigorous approach to comparing job bands/levels and grades with external pay levels, delivering reliable, trusted and easily-understood outputs.

The matching of roles will be done by using a banding system, and with a framework and guidance we will provide in the spreadsheet. We have tried to balance making it as simple as possible to complete, whilst retaining the ability to provide valuable benchmarks that the market has requested at the back end.

Totum will also be on hand to help with any specific job matches.

Lamp House Strategy will retain each firm’s completed spreadsheets for the duration of the project and will delete them from our records when the project concludes and firms have been provided with their outputs (no later than end of Q1 2025), however we will retain aggregated calculations of compensation information for the market as a whole for the purpose of being able to provide future benchmarking as part of Totum’s Business Services Reward survey, but the data will not be used for any other purpose. This benchmarking information will not be held at a firm level.

Annually, we will organise a market get-together to debate the trends and insights we uncover, and you will be welcome to participate in these conversations as we unpick the trends and debate what we learn. This will be a real value add as Totum Directors will keep you informed of key changes and trends in the market. It will also give you the opportunity to network and hear from your peer group.

This events will take place in early March – date to be confirmed. In 2024 the zoom event was attended by 45 HR and reward professionals.

Contact Head of Marketing & Projects sarah.broad@totumpartners.com