Nobody leaves on a Monday because of a Monday. By the time a conveyancer hands in notice, the decision has been made. This guide is about those weeks, and what a firm can count and ask before they run out.
Why do conveyancers leave?#
They leave when the work gets heavier, the support thinner or the future vaguer than they were told. Six causes are worth checking, and the sources below touch most of them. Each shows early in a firm's own records.
We also read conveyancer forums. Caseload came first there, then pay, supervision and progression. Forums skew towards angry people, so treat that as a lead, not a measurement. No source we found ranks the reasons for conveyancers alone.
| Reason | What it can cost you | First fix |
|---|---|---|
| Caseload that crept up. | Stalled files, overtime and the next resignation. | Count live files per person this week. |
| Supervision that is thin. | Errors that reach the client, and juniors who lose confidence. | Name a supervisor for every junior and diary the reviews. |
| Pay that has drifted. | A fee earner who answers the first better advert. | Check each salary against live adverts. |
| Progression nobody wrote down. | People who want the next role go and find it elsewhere. | Write the route, the criteria and a date. |
| Systems that rely on memory. | Hours lost to chasing, and files nobody noticed had stopped. | Ask who built the reminders and whether people trust them. |
| How the firm treats people. | Resignations that pay alone may not fix. | Ask in stay interviews, then act on the answer. |
What does the data say about people leaving?#
It says many people in law could leave, and that workload is a recurring theme. It gives no turnover rate for conveyancers. Here is what each source covers.
29%
of respondents to LawCare's January to March 2025 survey of people working in law could see themselves leaving their workplace within the next year (1,541 individuals, whole sector)
17%
of CLC lawyers and managers said they frequently felt unable to cope with workload (Council for Licensed Conveyancers survey of 733 people, 2025)
Legal Futures, reporting the CLC Workplace and Diversity Survey 2025, 1 June 2026
45%
of 524 property professionals, 57% of them conveyancers, said reducing the volume of work would do most to cut their stress, the top answer (Conveyancing Foundation, 2023)
The CLC survey covers licensed conveyancers and people in CLC practices, not every conveyancer. Almost a quarter of respondents said they might consider changing roles, reducing hours or moving organisations within 12 months.
LawCare's wider results add context. Its page does not say the sample is representative, so these are what participants said, not what they did.
- Work over their contracted hours78.7%
Whole legal sector
- Poor mental wellbeing59.1%
- Could leave their workplace within five years56.2%
- Could leave the legal sector within five years32.1%
- Met bullying, harassment or discrimination in the past 12 months19.5%
Source: LawCare, Life in the Law 2025 (fieldwork January to March 2025)
Employers feel it too. In CIPD's April to May 2026 survey of 1,014 UK HR professionals, 44% said people were harder to retain than a year earlier, down from 56% in 2024. These are all-sector figures, not legal ones.
Is caseload the reason, and what can you do about it?#
Often, yes. Caseload grows quietly, and nobody agrees the new number. Picture a conveyancer who joined to run a set number of live files. A colleague leaves, the role is not filled and the files are shared out. Months later that person is working evenings.
That is how one resignation can lead to another. Our guide to how many live files is too many explains why no official number exists and how to count yours. Here is what to add to it as a firm.
- Treat a vacancy as a caseload event. When a role empties, decide at once who takes which files, for how long, and what they get in return.
- Pace new instructions against capacity. Check who has room before a file is opened, not after it stalls.
- Pay for support. In the Conveyancing Foundation survey, 39% named recruiting more administration and support staff as something that would cut stress.
- Arrange holiday cover before the holiday. Nobody should return to a pile.
- Say when the gap will be filled. A team can live with an empty role if it knows the date.
Write the expected caseload into the role too. Our guide to writing a conveyancer job advert shows how.
What do supervision, systems and the way people are treated change?#
They decide whether a fee earner feels backed or left alone. A supervisor with no time is close to no supervisor. SRA guidance, updated on 12 June 2026, says there is no single model of supervision. It also says a supervisor with their own fee-earning caseload has less time to supervise others.
LawCare's figures show the gap. Only 54.6% of respondents with managerial responsibilities had training in managing people. Only 31.3% of people who managed others said their targets or billable hours were adjusted for that time. It is a whole-sector survey, and LawCare does not say it is representative.
What to do about it:
- Adjust supervisors' targets. If a partner supervises three juniors, their own billing target should say so.
- Fix the review dates. Put them in the diary and keep them when a completion lands.
- Ask the supervisee. Our guide on checking supervision before your first law job lists the questions a junior will ask you. Answer them first.
- Test the systems. Ask who built the reminders in the case management system and whether anyone trusts them. Diaries and memory are not a system.
- Take conduct seriously. In the LawCare survey, 19.5% of respondents had experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination in the previous 12 months.
Has pay drifted, and how do you check?#
Check by putting each salary beside live adverts for the same work. Pay that was set at hire does not move with the market unless someone reviews it. The market moves anyway.
The best national evidence we found is old. ONS analysis of its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings found that in 2018 the median hourly earnings of people who changed jobs rose 7.3%. For people who stayed, it rose 3.0%. These are provisional estimates for all UK workers, and they are eight years old. They show direction, not a legal-market rate.
Two practical checks follow. First, look at what firms are paying now: the jobs page shows the pay or earnings basis on every advert, and the salary guide gives bands. Second, date the last pay review for each person.
In CIPD's 2026 survey, 40% of the organisations that took steps to improve retention raised pay. A rise given after a resignation is a different matter. Our guide on whether to accept a counter-offer says a conveyancer should take one only if it fixes the reason for leaving, in writing, with a date. Our guide on how long a solicitor's notice period is explains what the contract decides once notice is in.
On this siteSee what a leaver costs your teamPut your own salary, hourly rate and months in post into the calculator and see every line of the sum with its source.Open the calculatorWhat should you put in writing about progression?#
Put in writing the next role, what the person must show to reach it, when you will review it and who decides. "There will be opportunities" is not a route. A fee earner who cannot see the next role, its criteria and a date will look at firms that can.
In CIPD's 2024 survey, 31% of the organisations that took specific steps to improve retention had created clearer career paths, up from 24% in 2022. The base was 389 organisations across all sectors. It shows firms are doing this, not that it works.
A route that lives only in a partner's head leaves when the partner leaves the room.
How do you find out before they resign?#
Ask, and count. A stay interview is one planned conversation with a current fee earner about what keeps them and what would make them go. It is the exit interview question, asked while you can still act. We found no independent UK evidence that it cuts resignations. It costs nothing, so try it.
Choose the time
A planned one-to-one, away from a completion day. It is not a performance review.
Ask open questions
What do you look forward to? What would make you leave? What would you change about your files? What do you need from your supervisor? Where do you want to be in two years?
Name one action
Before the meeting ends, say what you will do and by when.
Write it down
Send a short note afterwards so the person can see it was heard.
Do it, then report back
Check at the date you gave, and tell them what happened.
Keep exit data too: the reason given, length of service, caseload at the time and whether supervision was in the diary. CIPD says the best turnover data is your own.
| What to track | Why it matters | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Live files per fee earner, by type. | It shows who is stretched. | A rise since last quarter, or one person far above the rest. |
| Stalled files and how long they have stalled. | It can mean nobody had time to chase. | A list that is growing. |
| Hours worked past contract. | LawCare and CLC both found it common. | Evenings every week. |
| Date of last pay review and last progression talk. | It shows drift. | Over a year ago, or none on record. |
| Supervision held against the diary. | It shows whether reviews happen. | Missed dates. |
Look at it by person, not as a team average. An average of 70 files can hide one person on 40 and another on 110. We give no safe threshold, because we found none.
What does a leaver cost, and which figure can you trust?#
We found no current, sourced figure for what it costs to lose a conveyancer. The one legal-sector number is from 2014. The Law Gazette reported on 3 March 2014 that the average cost of replacing a legal sector employee was £39,887, and attributed the research to Unum. It gave no breakdown. It is more than twelve years old, so treat it as a sign of scale and nothing more.
The other number you will see is cost per hire. CIPD's 2026 median was £2,000 for employees other than senior managers (223 organisations, all sectors). It is the cost of recruiting, not of losing someone, and its definition does not include cover or lost output.
CIPD lists the costs worth tracking: resignation administration, recruitment and selection, cover during vacancies, and induction and training. Yet only 24% of organisations that knew their turnover data calculated its cost, in CIPD's 2026 survey.
The pool is smaller than it was. Today's Conveyancer reported in February 2026, on an IRN Legal Reports conveyancing report. It said only 10,724 solicitors were practising in residential conveyancing in England and Wales in January 2026, over 2,000 fewer than at the end of 2021. Legal Futures had reported in November 2023 that 11,226 solicitors worked in residential conveyancing across the UK in October 2023, 13% fewer than in September 2021. The two cover different areas. Check both against your own recruiting.
The bad hire calculator builds the sum from your salary, your hourly rate and the months in post, and shows the source for each line. It is a better guide than any 2014 average.
What should you do first?#
Start with the first four steps. They cost nothing.
Count caseloads by person
Put each fee earner's live files, by type, next to the number they were hired for.
Name every supervisor
Give each junior a named supervisor, fixed review dates and a supervisor whose targets allow the time.
Check pay against live adverts
Use the jobs page and the salary guide. Note the date of each person's last review.
Write the route up
For every fee earner and assistant, put the next role, criteria and a review date in writing.
Hold stay interviews
Ask each person what would make them leave. Say what you will do, and do it.
Fill the role or say why not
Tell the team when a vacancy will be filled, or what you will do until it is.
The same questions apply in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, London and Preston. See the locations page. For the role itself, read what a conveyancer does and what they earn.
If a role has already gone, you can book a 30-minute discovery meeting on Microsoft Teams. A written market read comes before you pay anything, and terms are agreed in writing before any CV is sent. See our conveyancing recruitment page. If your worry is a team that has not left yet, the first four steps cost nothing and are worth doing before you call anyone.
On this siteTalk through a conveyancing vacancyA 30-minute discovery meeting on Microsoft Teams. You get a written market read before you pay anything.Book a meetingSources
- LawCare: Life in the Law 2025 (fieldwork January to March 2025)
- Legal Futures: Poor mental health rife in the profession, says major study (2 October 2025, reporting LawCare)
- Legal Futures: CLC practices offer good but busy workplaces (CLC Workplace and Diversity Survey 2025, reported 1 June 2026)
- Legal Futures: Conveyancers positive about mental health despite high stress levels (Conveyancing Foundation Wellbeing at Work, 11 August 2023)
- Legal Futures: Number of conveyancing solicitors slumps as market contracts (28 November 2023, UK figure citing the UK law societies)
- CIPD: Resourcing and talent planning report 2026 (survey of 1,014 UK HR professionals, 2 April to 2 May 2026)
- CIPD: Resourcing and talent planning report 2024 (survey of 1,016 UK HR professionals, 4 to 22 April 2024)
- CIPD: Benchmarking employee turnover (11 June 2024)
- SRA: Effective supervision guidance (updated 12 June 2026)
- ONS: Analysis of job changers and stayers (29 April 2019, 2018 data, old)
- Law Gazette: Churn hits bottom line (3 March 2014, reporting Unum research, old)
- Today's Conveyancer: coverage of the IRN Legal Reports conveyancing report (19 February 2026)
- The Negotiator: One in three conveyancers plan to quit within five years (13 January 2023, reporting a TM Group survey of 850 UK property professionals, October to November 2022)
This is general information, not legal advice. Where a figure comes from another organisation, the source is above, and we say when it is dated.