We’re excited to announce that our 2026-2027 Salary Guides are here.
Whether you are comparing UK legal salaries, accountancy salaries or salary benchmarks, salary expectations are now one of the biggest factors influencing career decisions.
Our 2026/27 Legal and Accountancy salary guides provide regional salary data based on our market knowledge, helping UK professionals and employers make informed decisions.
Alongside detailed salary benchmarks, both guides include market commentary from our specialist consultants, covering recruitment trends, candidate expectations, salary movement and factors influencing hiring across both professions in the UK.
Why download our 2026/27 Salary Guides?
Understanding current salary benchmarks and hiring trends offers valuable insight when planning your next career move or preparing for salary discussions. How your salary compares with others in similar roles helps you approach those career and salary conversations with confidence.
Aside from salary ranges, these guides provide market insight from our experienced consultants. Speaking daily with legal and accountancy professionals, giving them first-hand insight into how firms are hiring and candidate expectations throughout the hiring process.
What is included in the guides?
Legal Salary guide
Our 2026/27 Legal Salary Guide benchmarks solicitor salaries, partner salaries, legal support salaries and regional pay across London, the Home Counties, and the East of England. The guide also explores salary expectations across different firm types, from Boutique and Regional firms through to City, International and US firms. This helps professionals understand how employer type influences compensation as well as career progression.
Legal salary benchmarking has become increasingly important as firms compete for experienced legal professionals. These guides give candidates real-time data to understand their value and have greater confidence during salary conversations.
Accountancy Practice Salary Guide
Our 2026/27 Accountancy salary guide covers accountancy, audit, tax, payroll, and bookkeeping across the UK’s major practice markets, providing role specific salaries rather than broad market averages. Each role is listed regionally allowing professionals to understand how location influences salary expectations in the UK’s major accountancy markets. The breakdown of salaries for accountancy roles illustrates the potential pathway from trainee to partner and how compensation develops as experience and responsibility grows.
Alongside detailed salary data, our specialist consultants share market insight on hiring trends, candidate movement and the factors shaping recruitment across the accountancy profession, providing valuable context for both professionals and employers navigating today’s market.
Market trends shaping salaries in 2026/27
Salary growth across the Legal and Accountancy sector is influenced by competition for experienced talent, but salary is no longer the only factor driving career decisions. While firms remain willing to offer competitive salaries to attract and retain high-quality professionals, candidates are placing increasing importance on career progression, hybrid working, work-life balance and long-term development. Regional differences also remain significant, with salaries varying between London, the Home Counties, and the East of England, while firm type can have an equally notable impact.
In the legal sector, salaries differ across US, International, City, Regional and Boutique firms, whereas accountancy professionals often see variation depending on firm size and specialism. Understanding these wider market trends alongside salary benchmarks provides valuable context for both professionals considering their next move and employers looking to remain competitive in an evolving recruitment market.
Why salary benchmarking matters
For employers
Effective salary benchmarking enables employers to attract talent and retain employees in today’s competitive recruitment market.
Aside from hiring, salary benchmarking helps employers improve talent attraction and retention. Knowing what your current employees should and could be on will give insight into when salary increases are necessary to promote retention and remain competitive. Both aspects combine to build a forecast for future raises and hires to remove the guesswork from budget planning.
For professionals
Whether you are considering a role or preparing for a pay review, understanding salary expectations provides greater confidence during negotiations. Having access to this information can support informed career progression and realistic salary expectations to initiate those conversations with management.
Salary information is also important for those who may not know the industry or region they wish to work in. Therefore, this guide provides a benchmark to new starters to align their progression to a certain career path to ensure they know their worth as an employee.
Salary Guides – Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, all you need to do is fill out the form with your information. The salary guide for the chosen sector will open in a new tab.
These salary guides are for UK Law and Accountancy professionals
The salaries are collated using market data and insight from our own recruitment team. They oversee placements in all of these roles and regions and therefore have accurate insight.
These salary guides cover London, the Home counties and the East of England
Yes, the legal salary guide compares salaries across UK based, Regional, City, International, Boutique and US law firms. Providing you with a salary representative of your role.
These salary guides are updated annually to keep up with salary movement.
Yes, employers can use the guides to benchmark salaries, support recruitment planning and improve retention.
View our other insights here
AJ Chambers provide specialist recruitment, mergers & acquisitions services and expert market intelligence across the Accounting and Legal practice sectors.
If you would like insight on careers guidance, talent attraction or M&A advice, please email us at: hello@aj-chambers.com. Or get Accountancy Age news updates here.
AJ Chambers Recruitment Ltd,