Law's most lucrative languages to boost career earnings
A new study from Preply revealed the best-paid and most in demand foreign languages in legal job ads in the UK
Language skills are critical in fostering a global outlook, which is certainly advantageous for practising lawyers. The increasing prominence of international law firms means that foreign languages can play an important role in their recruitment process, and firms will pay bigger salaries for candidates possessing desirable language skills.
- Portuguese is the legal industry's best-paid foreign language where job seekers can earn an average salary of £86,750.
- German and Arabic ranked 2nd and 3rd in the list.
- Although English was not counted in the ranking, legal job adverts mentioning English as a requirement paid an average of £54,049, for comparison.
|
Rank |
Language |
Average Salary |
|
1 |
Portuguese |
£86,750 |
|
2 |
German |
£81,809 |
|
3 |
Arabic |
£81,099 |
|
4 |
French |
£78,148 |
|
5 |
Spanish |
£62,915 |
|
6 |
Italian |
£52,049 |
|
7 |
Mandarin |
£42,559 |
|
8 |
Japanese |
£40,041 |
The most sought after languages by law firms in 2023
The best-paid languages to learn aren’t necessarily the ones with the most job openings. At least, that’s what experts at Preply found in their analysis.
- Job vacancies with German were the most prevalent, requested in over a third of legal job openings requiring foreign language skills in the research.
- This was followed by French (29%) and then Spanish (11%).
- The best-paid language, Portuguese, only ranked 7th out of 8 in the list of languages in demand, with Portuguese requested in only 4% of legal job ads with foreign languages mentioned.
|
Rank |
Language |
% Legal jobs |
|
1 |
German |
39% |
|
2 |
French |
29% |
|
3 |
Spanish |
11% |
|
4 |
Italian |
5% |
|
5 |
Mandarin |
5% |
|
6 |
Arabic |
5% |
|
7 |
Portuguese |
4% |
|
8 |
Japanese |
3% |
Methodology
- Preply analysed more than 360,000 job adverts to find out which languages are the most in demand and best-paid in the UK and US job markets as of September 2023.
- The data for the study comes from the job search engine ‘Adzuna’ and takes into account job ads explicitly looking for foreign language skills.
- Preply searched for job listings in the UK and US that mention any language requirements (other than English) in the job description.
- Preply categorised job listings using Adzuna's filter for 'legal jobs'.