Law360 Canada (November 24, 2025, 12:08 PM EST) -- A recent survey of the legal profession is showing high marks on issues like job satisfaction and compensation.

According to the 2025 Lawyer Satisfaction Survey — which marks Law360 Canada’s third deep dive into the feelings and thoughts that legal professionals have about their jobs — 63 per cent of respondents report being satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs overall, up from 60 per cent last year.

Collaboration and collegiality ranked high on respondents’ lists, with 74 per cent saying they were satisfied or very satisfied with that aspect of their work. More than half of the survey respondents — 51 per cent — indicated they were satisfied or very satisfied with their compensation, with 53 per cent saying they were happy with opportunities for advancement at their firms.

But not everything was positive, with only 48 per cent of survey respondents expressing satisfaction with their firms’ investment in technology, including AI. And as it was in previous surveys, only 42 per cent said they were happy with their firms’ billable hours requirements — although a quarter of overall respondents said this requirement was not applicable to them. In terms of financial stability, more partners — perhaps unsurprisingly — said they were satisfied with their compensation than did associates.

Ellen Low of Toronto’s Ellen Low & Co. Employment Law said the numbers on job satisfaction are “probably where I thought they were going to be.”

“You know, 51 per cent is not great in terms of those who are satisfied or very satisfied with compensation, but it does make me happy that collaboration and collegiality were high,” she said. “But it’s very nice to see the numbers for those who say they would still become a lawyer, given another chance.”

Jennifer Mathers McHenry of Mathers McHenry & Co. said, to her, the numbers on job satisfaction “kind of track.”

“The reality is this is a tough gig, yes, and not everyone is going to be happy in it — and I think there’s also absolutely nothing wrong, particularly at the associate level, with saying I am not where I am supposed to be, and I need something different,” she said. “We should be encouraging young lawyers to take some agency in their careers, because there is not one path to success. There are many, and they all look very different.”

Nearly half of respondents said their work-life balance has stayed the same over the past year, with roughly a quarter each saying it had gotten better or worse. And there were red flags in terms of workplace stress — 46 per cent of all respondents said they felt stressed most or all of the time, with associates reporting the highest stress levels, at 60 per cent, versus 44 per cent for partners and 30 per cent for other respondents. Only a third of men said they were stressed most or all of the time, while 58 per cent of women said so.

Most respondents — 55 per cent — said they had not experienced any specific workplace issues, including sexual harassment or any kind of discrimination. Half of women said they had experienced gender discrimination, with another 35 per cent saying they had experienced sexual harassment. For men, the figures are seven and six per cent, respectively. Nearly a third — 31 per cent — of lawyers of colour said they had experienced racial discrimination.

Mathers McHenry said she wished the numbers on discrimination and workplace issues surprised her, “but they don’t.”

“I do think the profession is moving in the right direction, but there’s an inherent power dynamic in the way that most firms are structured that makes it very difficult to tackle these problems,” she said. “One issue I have seen play out multiple times is what I call the problematic rainmaker — this person has a lot of power, and his partners rely on him for their incomes, so it is very difficult for any institution to say we are going to take somebody who we think behaves badly within the workplace and has a negative impact on junior staff or junior associates, and we’re going to take them out, even though it’s going to cost us a ton of money. That is a very difficult decision to encourage any institution or firm to make.”

Lawyer Brook Greenberg shares Mathers McHenry’s lack of surprise.

“They are consistent with what we have seen in articling surveys and other studies,” he said. “And the numbers mean that both firms and regulators need to understand these issues, understand the scope of them, and really look at why what we’ve done to date hasn’t brought those numbers significantly lower than that, and I think that speaks to having more and better training. I think we need to all do a bit of a self-reflection and deep-dive into how we can do things better as employers.”

Greenberg — who serves as president of the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) but emphasized he was speaking only as an individual lawyer — said having actual evidence and data, and tracking it over time, is the first thing that needs to be done to improve people’s experiences in the legal profession.

“You can’t address a problem unless you understand it in an evidence-based away. And I think firms are having a reckoning with these issues — they don’t necessarily know how to address them, but an intention and desire to address them is a great step,” he said. “And another thing in an employment context is just to be really deliberative and ask people what would help them — don’t make assumptions, but really kind of dig down into the issues and find out what kinds of supports would help with things like bullying and harassment and discrimination.”

Low said 15 years ago, the law was done in a certain way — very paper heavy and very hierarchy-driven. But, she added, “to the benefit and credit of the profession,” there is now a conversation about what works for people within a firm.

“Is this serving the people within the firm? And if not, is there a way in which we can practise where we can help other people achieve what they want to do?” she said. “I think the fact that we’ve been asking the question about things like satisfaction from a work-life balance perspective is kind of revolutionary and probably would have been unheard of 15 or 20 years ago.”

The results of this survey are a combination of English and French responses, with 262 respondents in total. Of that group, 37 per cent were associates, 33 per cent were equity partners, nine per cent were counsel, five per cent were articling students, four per cent were non-equity partners and 11 per cent were other lawyers. Forty-nine per cent of respondents were male, 48 per cent were female, less than one per cent identified as non-binary and three per cent preferred not to identify.

In terms of provincial breakdowns, 46 per cent of respondents were from Ontario, 16 per cent from Alberta, 15 per cent from British Columbia, eight per cent from the Atlantic provinces (New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island), six per cent from Saskatchewan and Manitoba respectively, and four per cent from Quebec.

Sixty-six per cent of respondents were white, eight per cent South Asian, eight per cent other, four per cent Black, two per cent Chinese, two per cent Indigenous, one per cent or fewer Arab, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian, with 10 per cent preferring not to identify.

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