2025 Brightflag Report Benchmarks Corporate Legal Ops Salaries

A lack of reliable benchmarks for corporate legal ops salaries has left legal ops professionals struggling to evaluate whether their compensation is fair. Kevin Cohn writes that Brightflag’s 2025 Corporate Legal Operations Compensation Report provides fair market data on legal ops and informs hiring and career planning. 

As traditional salary databases lack comprehensive data, legal operations has been categorized alongside paralegals or legal assistants, misrepresenting the distinct scope of legal operations’ work and strategic value. The 2025 Compensation Report rectifies this by analyzing compensation data across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. It breaks down legal ops salaries by department size for heads of legal ops and by years of experience for non-head roles, providing a nuanced view of compensation drivers.

The report found that department size has a significant impact on the pay of heads of legal operations. Median compensation ranged from $171,000 in departments with fewer than 10 employees to $266,000 in departments with more than 100. This differential reflects the greater responsibility and complexity in larger legal teams. For non-head roles, compensation correlated closely with experience, ranging from $84,000 for professionals with less than five years of experience in the field to $164,000 for those with over 20 years of experience.

The report also highlights an alarming gender disparity in compensation: Women in legal operations earn 24% less than men on average. This inequality persists even with significant female representation in the field, suggesting systemic issues in compensation equity.

Brightflag’s survey data on legal ops salaries spans 18 countries, 37 US states, and over 17 industries, reinforcing legal ops as a global, cross-sector discipline. With the report data in hand, employers can benchmark compensation more effectively, and legal ops professionals can use the insights to negotiate pay and plan their career trajectories.