Aon | Professional Services Practice
Pay Transparency Laws: Resources for Professional Services Firms
Release Date: September 2025While nearly all organizations operating in North America and the European Union are subject to current and emerging pay transparency laws, professional services firms face unique considerations when formulating a compliance strategy.
Key Takeaways
- Although laws related to pay transparency have been in effect for decades in some jurisdictions, modern pay transparency laws requiring detailed information about compensation in job postings is a newer development.
- Professional services firms are responding by refreshing their job architecture, benchmarking their pay, and analyzing requirements in impacted jurisdictions.
- Certain firms may prefer a consistent global approach over a jurisdictional compliance approach.
Accounting, consulting, and law firms are devising strategies to manage the potentially competing priorities of compliance, talent acquisition, and internal total rewards messaging across geographies.
Large global accounting and consulting firms may already have useful in-house tools and knowledge from operating in early pay transparency jurisdictions and serving clients. However, these firms will still need to consider the impact of pay transparency laws on the performance and categorization of each job function in each jurisdiction, as well as how they will approach pay transparency and equity with their existing staff.
Law firms, especially large U.S. and UK-based firms, approach pay transparency with a unique baseline, having most of their attorneys on relatively transparent pay structures known as “lockstep.” While some work will still be required to achieve compliance, an existing culture of transparency, at least for base pay, will likely make for an easier transition.
The greater challenge for law firms will be formalizing job architecture and compensation principles applicable to their professional staff (non-attorneys), for whom formal corporate-style structures may not have previously been in place.
Aon's July 23, 2025 global insight covers these issues in greater detail and summarizes the results of the 2025 Global Pay Transparency Study (registration required).
Contact
For more information about healthcare costs, benefit plan strategies, or benchmarking and how Aon can help, please contact Jake Delman and Mark Scarafone.
Senior Consultant
Washington, DC
Senior Vice President and Health & Benefits Leader
Radnor, PA
About Aon
Aon (NYSE: AON) exists to shape decisions for the better — to protect and enrich the lives of people around the world. Through actionable analytic insight, globally integrated Risk Capital and Human Capital expertise, and locally relevant solutions, our colleagues provide clients in over 120 countries with the clarity and confidence to make better risk and people decisions that help protect and grow their businesses.
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