Law firms advertise more workplace perks per job than any other UK industry, according to new analysis from Reward Gateway | Edenred, yet separate research from the employee benefits platform Zest finds that 66% of legal workers say they feel overwhelmed, the highest share of any sector it surveyed. The two studies measure different things, but together they put the legal profession’s approach to pay, benefits and wellbeing under scrutiny.
Legal tops a 37-industry ranking for advertised perks
Reward Gateway | Edenred analysed 8,714 UK job adverts across 37 industries and counted the perks each advertised, from private healthcare, pensions and bonuses to flexible working and extra holiday. Legal came first with 163 perks per 100 jobs sampled, according to the company’s analysis, which was also reported by Onrec.
Accountancy was second and, according to the study, is also the highest-paying of the 37 sectors, with an average advertised salary of £61,265. Charity was third at 157 perks per 100 jobs. At the bottom, graduate training and internships advertised 39 perks per 100 jobs, followed by manufacturing at 58.98 and engineering at 59.13. Engineering also had the most live vacancies of any sector analysed, 6,975, the company said.
The company set out its method in notes to editors. It collected data from 37 job categories on Reed.co.uk, sampling up to 260 permanent listings per category, and removed duplicates to leave 8,714. Each listing was checked for mentions of 75 predefined perks, with each perk counted no more than once per listing. The “perks per 100 jobs sampled” figure is the total number of perk mentions divided by the number of listings sampled, multiplied by 100.
Reward Gateway | Edenred said some predefined perks overlap in meaning, such as “work from home” and “remote working”, so a single benefit may in a small number of cases have been counted twice. It also said listings quoting hourly, daily, unspecified or non-sterling pay were left out of salary calculations, so some category averages rest on a small number of listings. The company did not disclose how many legal listings were in the sample.
Chris Britton, People Experience Director at Reward Gateway | Edenred, said: “There’s a persistent assumption that a strong salary will always win the war for talent.” He added: “Pay might get a candidate’s attention, but benefits, flexibility and wellbeing are increasingly what make them stay at companies for many years to come.”
A survey of workers tells a different story
Zest, which describes itself as an employee benefits technology platform and is part of the Epassi group, published its findings in a separate release. According to Zest, 66% of legal workers say they feel “overwhelmed” by their work, the highest figure across all sectors. The next highest in its table were IT and computing at 62%, business services at 59%, healthcare at 57% and education at 51%.
Zest said only 34% of legal employees use all of the benefits available to them through their employer. It also reported that 57% of legal workers know what perks are available to them, that 43% think they get value for money from their benefits, that 55% want their company to invest in better benefits and that 53% say the quality of benefits affects morale. More than a third (36%) of legal employees said they want to change sectors to access better benefits, according to Zest.
The research was carried out by the independent agency Opinium, which surveyed 2,000 UK workers, weighted to be nationally representative, between 11 and 22 June 2026. Zest did not disclose how many of those respondents worked in the legal sector.
Antonio Barradas, Regional Managing Director, said: “The legal sector has always faced the brunt of stress and poor workplace wellbeing, and it’s clear that current benefits offerings are doing little to positively change that.” He also said: “Benefits are a cost-effective solution to engaging employees and retaining talent. However, they are ineffective if they are not personalised or tailored to employee needs.”
What the two studies do and do not show
The Reward Gateway | Edenred ranking counts perks mentioned in advertisements on one job board. It does not measure which benefits staff receive or use. The Zest survey asks workers about their own experience. The two studies measure different things.
Wider evidence on wellbeing in the law
Other research points to wellbeing pressures in the profession. LawCare, the charity that supports legal professionals, ran its Life in the Law survey of people and organisations in the sector from January to March 2025. According to LawCare, 59.1% of respondents had poor mental wellbeing, 50.0% said they had experienced anxiety often, very often or all of the time over the previous 12 months, and 43.4% said their mental health and wellbeing was very significantly influenced by work. LawCare also reported that respondents were at high risk of burnout.
An earlier round of LawCare research, covering 2020 and 2021, found that 69% of participants had experienced mental ill health in the past year, according to the charity.
