How Much Does a Paralegal Actually Cost a UK Firm in 2026?

A paralegal’s advertised salary is never the real cost of hiring one. By the time employer National Insurance, pension contributions, recruitment fees and the desk they sit at are added, the true monthly figure is usually well above what the job ad implied. Here is what actually goes into it.

The salary is the starting point, not the total

Take a paralegal on a £28,000 salary. That is £2,333 a month before anything else is added.

Employer National Insurance

Any paralegal cost UK 2026 calculation has to start with employer National Insurance. For 2025/26, employer National Insurance is charged at 15% on earnings above the £5,000 secondary threshold, per HMRC’s published rates. On a £28,000 salary, that is 15% of £23,000, or £3,450 a year, close to £288 a month. This is not optional and it is rarely mentioned in the headline cost of a hire.

Pension contributions

Auto-enrolment requires a minimum employer contribution of 3% of qualifying earnings. On the same salary, that adds roughly £70 a month.

Recruitment costs

A recruitment agency fee for a paralegal hire commonly runs to around 15% of the first year’s salary, one of the costs a dedicated outsourced paralegal avoids entirely. Spread over year one, that is another £350 a month on a £28,000 hire, before accounting for the time a partner or practice manager spends interviewing.

Desk space, equipment and software

A desk, a case management licence, a laptop, and a share of office overhead typically add somewhere between £250 and £450 a month, depending on the firm’s existing setup. None of this applies to outsourced support, since the paralegal works inside your own systems.

Paralegal cost UK 2026: the real monthly number

Add it together and a £28,000 in-house paralegal typically costs somewhere in the region of £3,300 to £3,400 a month once National Insurance, pension, a recruitment fee, and overhead are included, not the £2,333 the salary alone suggests.

Understanding the real paralegal cost UK 2026 figure is not a criticism of hiring in-house. For firms with a steady, high volume of work for one person, it is often the right call. But it is worth seeing the real number before deciding, rather than the salary figure alone.

Put your own numbers in

Rather than take our figures on trust, the Pricing page has a calculator where you can enter your own salary, overhead and recruitment assumptions and see the real monthly cost, set directly against the flat-rate packages.