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Legal Education Foundation
Company Profile
INDUSTRY: Non-profit/Legal
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 20-40
LEF are an independent foundation supporting communities across the UK to use the law to improve their lives and the lives of others.
They fund organisations which use the law to secure rights and address systemic failures. LEF also support work advocating for policy improvements and rule of law principles in the administration and development of law.
“Right from the initial call with 3R Strategy, they demonstrated an excellent understanding of our needs and requirements. With their help, we delivered an informative and structured salary policy coupled with grading and benchmarking. This was all delivered within tight timescales which helped us meet our governance timetable.”
Challenge
The Legal Education Foundation already had pay ranges in place but needed a market competitiveness review to ensure their pay strategy remained appropriate and competitive. They are a small organisation and needed confidence that their approach to pay was fair and market-aligned.
Solution
We began by reviewing their existing pay ranges and then benchmarked all roles in the organisation to provide a complete picture of their market positioning. Though benchmarking every position wasn’t initially requested, it proved more efficient than aligning roles to a framework first.
Our approach included:
- Benchmarking all roles against relevant market data
- Creating descriptors for each pay level to clarify progression paths
- Producing dispersion charts showing where individual employees sat against market rates
- Presenting multiple options for aligning their pay ranges with market data
- Providing clear documentation on competitiveness
Outcome
The comprehensive review revealed that the Legal Education Foundation’s pay ranges were already well-aligned with the market—particularly when compared to other not-for-profit organisations of similar size. This confirmation gave them the confidence to communicate transparently with employees about their approach to pay.
With our support, they were now able to:
- Speak confidently about the competitiveness of their pay ranges
- Explain clearly the differences between roles (e.g., grants officer, grants manager, senior grants manager)
- Provide transparency about how salaries were set and how progression works between roles
- Use the level descriptors as building blocks for potential future competency frameworks
The organisation now have the foundation needed to build a more transparent approach to pay and career development.