Due to shifting workplace preferences and a reemergence of trial work out of a pandemic-era stupor, litigation practices large and small are facing high rates of churn among legal support professionals, giving an often undervalued sector of the legal industry’s workforce an upper hand in recruitment.

Flexible schedules, higher pay and inclusion in executive decision-making have become the bargaining chips used to lure away legal assistants from firms they’ve been at for many years or to ward off potential poaching, according to legal industry leaders and secretaries.