COMP NEWS – A new Brightflag survey has found that compensation for legal operations professionals has soared in the last year, leading some professionals to increase their pay by as much as 26% since 2022.

NEW YORK, March 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Brightflag, the AI-powered legal operations platform, today announced the findings from their 2023 Legal Operations Compensation Survey. The annual survey captures data to help legal operations professionals, General Counsel, and HR leaders to better understand fair market compensation and trends for the legal operations function. The survey was conducted in partnership with Legal Operators, a leading community of legal operations professionals.

“This year’s survey was answered by more than 400 legal operations professionals working in almost 30 different countries, which demonstrates just how much demand there is for pay transparency in legal operations,” said Kevin Cohn, Chief Customer Officer at Brightflag. “For the second year in a row, this survey provides the data legal operations professionals, General Counsel, and hiring managers need to make informed decisions for themselves and their organizations.”

While transparency around salaries has improved somewhat with the introduction of pay transparency laws, many challenges remain in understanding fair market compensation for legal operations roles. This survey is designed to ease that struggle and shine a light on fair compensation for legal operations work.

The survey found that, in addition to the higher compensation rates for legal operations professionals, the gender pay gap has eased as well, leading to more equitable pay for women and non-binary employees.

• Head of legal operations compensation in the largest legal departments is 26% higher this year compared to the results of the 2022 survey.
• The ten highest-compensated respondents earn more than $450,000 annually in total compensation.
• The gender pay gap has eased slightly for heads of legal operations, but women and non-binary people are still paid 9% less than men with the same title. The gap is even wider for other legal operations roles at 23%.
• Pay is 30% higher for legal operations professionals with law-practicing backgrounds, remaining stable since last year’s report.
• Paralegals are increasingly moving into legal operations roles, but former paralegals and legal administrative staff are paid as much as 29% less than legal operations professionals with other backgrounds.

To read more about the survey, click here.

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