Obiter vs.
A legal secretary
The average legal secretary costs £34,000 a year. They work 37.5 hours a week, support 1–2 fee earners, and take holidays. Here's how that compares to Obiter.
Legal secretary (annual all-in)
£34,000
salary + NIC + pension + absence cover
Obiter (5 fee earners, Professional plan)
£7,740
per year · no NIC · no holiday cover
You save
£26,260
per year — on comparable admin coverage
Head-to-head comparison
| Category | Legal Secretary | Obiter AI |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | £28,000–£40,000/yr Salary, NIC, pension, holiday, sick pay, training, desk, equipment, and management overhead. Often more with London weighting. | From £588/yr per fee earner Starter plan at £49/month. Professional plan £129/month. No NIC, no pension, no holiday cover, no recruitment cost. |
| Hours | 37.5 hrs/week A legal secretary works standard office hours. Urgent evening emails wait until morning. Court deadline Friday afternoon means overtime or hope. | 24/7/365 Obiter processes emails at 2am, on bank holidays, over Christmas. Every email that arrives gets classified and drafted without delay. |
| Capacity | 1–2 fee earners A good legal secretary can realistically support 1–2 busy solicitors. At 3+, things start slipping. At 5+, you need another hire. | Unlimited fee earners One Obiter subscription supports 50 fee earners as easily as it supports 1. Scaling up takes seconds, not months of recruitment. |
| Sickness & absence | Firm bears the risk When your secretary is off ill, emails pile up. Maternity leave means 12 months of agency costs or an overwhelmed team. | Zero absence risk AI doesn't get ill, go on holiday, hand in notice, or require cover. The service runs around the clock. |
| Recruitment | 6–12 weeks, £3,000–£8,000 Advertising, agency fees, interview time, notice periods, and 3-month probation. Then 3–6 months before they're fully up to speed. | Live the same day Sign up, connect your mailbox, run onboarding. The flow is designed to get you from registration to first AI action in under an hour. |
| Consistency | Variable by individual Different people have different skills, standards, and memory. Turnover means quality dips while the next person learns your firm. | Identical quality, every time The same accuracy, the same tone, the same compliance checks — on every email, for every matter, every day. |
| AML & compliance | Dependent on training Your secretary may know the CDD checklist, but managing PEP screening, enhanced due diligence, and audit trails requires specialist knowledge they may not have. | Built in, always current Automated CDD workflows, PEP screening, SRA-ready audit trail — always up to date, never relying on one person's recall. |
| Time recording | Not their job Your legal secretary manages your diary and emails. Time recording is still your problem — and still getting lost. | Automatic for every action Every email, call, document reviewed, and file action is automatically logged as a time entry. Nothing escapes the ledger. |
| Emotional intelligence | Human warmth and empathy A great legal secretary builds genuine relationships with clients, handles distressed callers with care, and reads the room in a way AI cannot. | Not a replacement for human contact Obiter handles routine correspondence, not crisis calls. Complex or emotionally sensitive client interactions still need a human. |
| Complex novel situations | Human judgment An experienced secretary knows when something doesn't fit the template and flags it for the solicitor without being told. | Escalates when uncertain Obiter flags emails it can't confidently classify for human review rather than guessing — and a fee earner reviews every action before anything is sent. |
✓ Obiter advantage · = Comparable / context-dependent
The honest take
A brilliant, experienced legal secretary is genuinely irreplaceable for certain things — the distressed client who calls in tears, the complex situation that doesn't fit any template, the institutional knowledge built over years. If you have one, keep them.
But the reality is that the majority of what a legal secretary does — processing emails, drafting replies, chasing AML documents, recording time, building LAA claims — is systematic, repeatable work. That's exactly what AI is built for.
The firms getting the most from Obiter aren't replacing their secretaries. They're freeing their secretaries from the repetitive work so they can focus on the things that actually need a human — and deploying Obiter for the rest.
Try it before you decide
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