You've accepted a new role, handed in your notice, and then - almost immediately - the conversation shifts. A salary increase appears, promises are made, and the firm you were ready to leave suddenly wants to talk.
A salary increase appears, promises are made, and the firm you were ready to leave suddenly wants to talk. It's a moment that catches many lawyers off guard. And how you respond could define the next chapter of your career.
What is a counteroffer in legal recruitment?
A counteroffer is a proposal made by your current employer after you have submitted your resignation. In legal, these typically involve a salary increase, an accelerated partnership review, a change in practice area, reduced billing targets, or a combination of several of these. The form the offer takes often signals what the firm believes prompted the resignation - though it doesn't always address the underlying cause.
Why do law firms make counteroffers?
Counteroffers are rarely part of a firm's long-term retention strategy. They are, almost always, a reaction to an immediate problem.
Losing a fee-earner creates pressure on multiple fronts: client continuity, workload distribution, team stability. Replacing someone takes time and costs money. In that context, a counteroffer is often the most efficient response available.
But efficient and effective are not the same thing.
Should I accept a counteroffer from my law firm?
The short answer: it depends on why you were leaving in the first place.
If the motivation was primarily financial, and the offer genuinely reflects that, a counteroffer can be a reasonable resolution. But more often, the reasons lawyers move are broader - progression, culture, management, the type of work on offer. These are not issues a pay rise can fix, and accepting one without addressing them tends to delay rather than resolve the problem.
The data reflects this. Research consistently shows that around 70% of professionals who accept a counteroffer end up leaving within a year regardless.
What are the risks of accepting a counteroffer?
There are several things worth considering carefully before you decide:
- The dynamic has shifted. Once you've resigned, something changes on both sides. The firm knows you were willing to leave. That awareness doesn't disappear, and it can quietly reshape how you are perceived and trusted.
- The underlying issues remain. If what prompted your search was structural - the type of work, the people, the trajectory of the firm - a salary adjustment won't change any of that. The risk isn't removed. It's deferred.
- Your annual review may be affected. Accepting a pay rise as part of a counteroffer often means forgoing your next salary review, since the adjustment has already been made.
- Internal parity becomes a problem. Adjusting one individual's package can raise questions around fairness across the team, and sets an unintended precedent that external offers are the most effective route to a pay rise.
When does a counteroffer actually work?
Counteroffers are not inherently negative. There are situations where they lead to a genuine and lasting reset - particularly where both sides are honest about what prompted the move, and where the firm has the intent and ability to act on specific, addressable concerns.
For lawyers on the partnership track, a counteroffer is worth taking seriously only if it changes your position on that track in a meaningful and verifiable way - and that commitment should be confirmed in writing.
For those considering a move in-house, a counteroffer from a firm is harder to evaluate against the motivation, because the reasons for going in-house are rarely about a single firm. They are about a different kind of work, a different relationship with the law, and a different professional life entirely. No package adjustment changes that.
What should I do if I receive a counteroffer?
Before making any decision, ask yourself three questions:
- Why
was I looking in the first place? Be honest. If the answer points
to something structural, ask whether the counteroffer actually addresses
it.
- Has
anything materially changed, or has a problem simply been acknowledged? Recognition
is not resolution.
- If I stay, what does the next two years look like? Map it out specifically - progression, remuneration, type of work. If you can't articulate it clearly, that's a signal.
If you do decide to accept, get everything agreed in writing before withdrawing from your new role. Verbal commitments made under pressure do not always materialise.
Final thoughts
Counteroffers can work. But they work best when both sides are being honest about why they're at the table - and when the firm is genuinely addressing the cause, not just the symptom.
For firms, the more useful question is why the conversation reached this point at all, and what that means for how retention is approached going forward.
For individuals, the counteroffer is rarely the full story. The question is whether it needs to be.
