England and Wales

The in-house solicitor profession in numbers

How many solicitors work in-house in England and Wales, how that has changed, and what the data actually measures. Every figure shows the date it covers, how the population was defined and who published it.

Last updated: September 2026

The in-house profession

In-house solicitors

35,738

The number of solicitors working in-house across business, government, charities and education.

Latest published count (July 2023)

The Law Society of England and Wales — Annual Statistics Report 2023

Share of practising certificate holders working in-house

22%

In-house solicitors as a share of practising certificate holders.

Same dataset as the count (July 2023)

The Law Society of England and Wales — Annual Statistics Report 2023

Practising solicitors in England and Wales (whole profession)

179,054

All solicitors holding a practising certificate — the denominator behind the in-house share.

Reporting period: August 2026

Solicitors Regulation Authority — Population of solicitors in England and Wales

The in-house count and share come from the same Law Society dataset (July 2023). It is the latest published in-house count; no official count has been published for 2024, 2025 or 2026, and inlaw does not estimate one.

The SRA describes more than 34,000 in-house solicitors working in more than 6,000 organisations across England and Wales on its undated Working in-house page. Its March 2023 in-house thematic review gave more than 34,500. These rest on 2023 SRA data and are not a newer count.

The SRA reported 214,773 solicitors on the roll — End of August 2026. Being on the roll is not the same as holding a practising certificate.

The direction of travel

Only years the Law Society labels in its 2023 report on the same basis are shown. Other years are left out rather than estimated.

Share of practising certificate holders working in-house (Law Society basis)

Source: The Law Society Annual Statistics Report 2023 (Figure 11). Years shown are those labelled in the report; the 2022 report's 26% used a different denominator and is not comparable.

Historical: the SRA's 2023 figures

Kept to show the SRA picture in 2023. These use a different date and definition from the Law Society figures above, so the two should not be compared directly.

The wider solicitor population

The overall population gives the denominator behind the in-house share. It is published continuously, unlike the in-house figures.

Practising solicitors

Solicitors on the roll

Solicitors on the roll

The fall between 2022 and 2023 reflects an administrative exercise to remove lapsed entries from the roll, not a fall in the profession. Practising certificate holders rose over the same period.

Who employs in-house solicitors

The split between private sector, public sector and other employers.

Share of in-house solicitors

What inlaw is seeing

Aggregated from roles advertised on inlaw. These figures describe inlaw's own data, not the profession as a whole, and groups too small to report are left out.

In-house legal roles advertised on inlaw

191

Reporting period: 2026 Q3

Count of in-house legal roles first published on inlaw during 2026 Q3. Counts roles advertised on inlaw only — not the wider recruitment market.

Working patterns in advertised roles

Share of advertised roles

Share of the 142 roles published on inlaw during 2026 Q3 that explicitly stated a working pattern. Roles that did not state a pattern are excluded from the denominator.

Seniority of advertised roles

Share of advertised roles

Share of the 191 roles published on inlaw during 2026 Q3 with a recorded seniority level.

inlaw's read on the numbers

What the data tells us

The latest published in-house count is from 2023. The whole profession has kept growing since then, but no one has yet published an updated in-house figure.

The Law Society's Annual Statistics Report 2023 counted 35,738 solicitors working in-house in England and Wales at July 2023. That was 22% of all practising certificate holders. The Law Society reports that the in-house number rose by 1,058 (3%) on 2022, and that the in-house share rose from 19% in 2014 to 22% in 2023. On the same basis the share was also 22% in 2021, so the share was broadly level between 2021 and 2023 while the number kept rising.

The SRA describes "more than 34,000" in-house solicitors in "more than 6,000" organisations, around one in five of the profession. Its figures come from 2023 data on a slightly different basis: the SRA's in-house diversity data (33,584 at April 2023) also counts government solicitors working without a practising certificate. The two bodies measure at different dates and use different definitions, so their numbers should not be combined or compared directly.

You may see "26%" quoted elsewhere. That figure comes from the Law Society's 2022 report and leaves out practising certificate holders not recorded as working for any organisation. It is not comparable with the 22% above.

The total number of practising solicitors has continued to rise, to 179,054 at the end of August 2026 according to the SRA. No official in-house count has been published for 2024, 2025 or 2026, and inlaw does not estimate one.

Commentary by inlaw. Figures referred to are published by the bodies named beside them.

Looking for pay? See advertised in-house salaries from inlaw job adverts.

Where these figures come from

inlaw collects published statistics about the in-house legal profession from official bodies, records the exact population definition and reporting period for each figure, and links to the original publication. Where no figure has been published for a year, that year is left blank rather than estimated. Separately, inlaw publishes aggregate figures drawn from roles advertised on the platform; these describe inlaw's own data, not the profession as a whole, and small groups are suppressed.

This page was last updated on 24 September 2026.

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