LEAP Legal Software has released Profitability in Law: Global Report 2026, which analyses legal professionals across the globe regarding profitability perceptions, priorities, and practices.
The report reveals that excessive manual work is a barrier to efficiency, and therefore profitability to law firms. This stems from a lack of sufficient support staffing picking up the load, which is instead covered by lawyers — thereby burdening them with excessive administrative duties rather than focusing on more valuable legal work.
Key stats you need to know
- Almost 1 in 2 firms spend over 2 hours on administrative tasks, rather than focusing on billable legal duties.
- The AU/NZ region cites excessive manual admin work as the biggest barrier to efficiency (54%), and is also the same region that spends the least amount of hours on such tasks.
- Lawyers report that the lack of efficiency lies in insufficient support staff, resulting in lawyers working on administrative rather than legal work.
48% of law firms spend over 2 hours per day on administrative duties
- The US/CA region spends the most hours on admin tasks across the board (8% for more than 5 hours).
- The AU/NZ region consumes the least time on admin duties, with 12% spending less than 1 hour.
- 42% of law firms worldwide spend 2 to 5 hours on admin duties.
A significant portion of law firms (42%) spend a large amount of time on administrative tasks and duties, up to 2 to 5 hours. Most concerningly, 6% spend more than 5 hours on such tasks. This implies that lawyers are working more non-billable hours rather than focusing on billable law duties and tasks.
The region spending the most time on admin duties is the US/CA, having the largest percentage of firms spending over 5 hours on such tasks (8%). This is followed by UK/IE, wherein 7% of firms spend the same amount of time. AU/NZ is the least burdened with administrative duties, as only 4% of firms spend more than 5 hours, and has the largest percentage of firms utilising less than 1 hour on admin tasks (12%).
Excessive manual admin work as biggest barrier to efficiency and cost-saving
- 44% of firms report that too much manual administrative work is the largest hurdle to efficiency and to reducing costs.
- The AU/NZ region has the largest number of firms citing excessive manual admin work as the biggest barrier (54%).
- Locating sufficient and competent support and administrative staff is a difficult endeavor for legal firms, leaving lawyers to compensate for this gap.
The majority of legal firms worldwide cite that the biggest hurdle to efficiency and cost reduction is excessive manual administrative work (44%). That is over 2 in 5 firms declaring that they are burdened by non-billable tasks, rather than focusing on actual legal work.
All three regions also cite too much manual admin work in their top three barriers to efficiency. AU/NZ and US/CA cite this as their top barrier, reported by 54% and 39% of firms, respectively. However, the difference in percentage shows that AU/NZ is more critical of this issue, which would also explain why this is the same region that spends the least amount of time on admin duties.
Although support staff is essential to cover manual admin work, hiring competent and enough personnel is another challenge legal firms face currently. Without administrative staff, duties are passed on to solicitors who, instead of doing meaningful and billable legal work, are burdened by administrative workload.
About the research
LEAP Legal Software’s Profitability in Law: Global Report 2026 is based on quantitative research conducted by Agile Market Intelligence, reflecting the sentiments of 700 legal professionals across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, and Canada, and collected between 10 and 28 November 2025. The report outlines how strategy, people, technology and AI drive profitability in legal practice, with data-driven recommendations on how to close the gap between profitability potential and execution.
You can download the report here.
