Legal Services Award Pay Guide – 1 July 2024

** If you need the 1 July 2024 Legal Services Award pay rates click here. **

The Fair Work Commission announced their decision on pay rates for the 2024-2025 financial year. Fair Work has confirmed an increase to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and the minimum pay rates as they apply to all awards. The increase applies to the Legal Services Award from the first full pay period beginning on or after 1 July 2024.

I employ staff under the Legal Services Award in 2024. How do these changes impact me?

Well it’s important that all businesses who employ staff under a Modern Award be across the changes. The penalties for underpayment are significant, not to mention the reputational damage that comes from having your company brand associated with an underpayment scandal.

Employers need to closely monitor pay rate changes because they are changing at least once a year. This year from 1 July, Legal Services Award (LSA) staff including law graduates and paralegals received a 3.75% jump in their ordinary hourly pay rates.

Most LSA staff don’t understand why they even need to bother filling in timesheets. Soon the law firm is wasting time chasing up timesheets and all the while data accuracy is compromised.

This is a process that requires continuous review because rates are always changing review their wage arrangements and implement the necessary wage and superannuation increases.
Part of this process involves communicating wage rate increases to staff in writing before they take effect.

Where can I access the updated pay rates?

Click here to request a copy of the updated Legal Services Award Pay Rates. We’ll send them straight to your inbox in PDF format.

How does Fairtime help my business manage payroll compliance for Legal Services Award staff?

There’s plenty of ways Fairtime can help you.

Our cloud-based timesheet application converts a timesheet into a payslip with one click. Fairtime’s unique ‘pay rate engine’ provides automated Award interpretation. When your staff submit a timesheet, our system reads the hours and tells you what the staff should be paid in keeping with the LSA pay rates.

Clients who use Fairtime software need not worry about pay rate changes because we take care of everything. We’ll save you time and effort each pay run manually checking pay rates to produce a payslip.

In addition to our timesheet app, we also provide a full suite of compliance reporting to help your business demonstrate compliance with Modern Awards.

We already have staff filling out timesheets. What’s the difference?

Whilst the timesheets in your typical payroll software are easy to use, they leave the calculation of pay rates up to each employer and do not provide accurate information on how to correctly classify staff according to the LSA in 2024.

Consider this situation. You use Xero to pay staff – BUT you have to do this manually. First, you must download a copy of the most up to date pay rates after doing some online searches.

Next up, you will have to go into that payroll app or spreadsheet and create pay categories for each pay rate (this can take multiple hours depending on the number of pay rates and number of staff at the company).

Finally, once an employee submits a timesheet, your or your staff will have to cross reference worked hours with a pay rate and assign the correct pay rate to those worked hours. And this exact process needs to be carried out for every staff member, for every timesheet they submit each and every pay run. How exhausting?!!

Even once you have prepared the manual payslip – you are still at risk of underpayment. Most awards contain at least SIX allowances that can apply to your staff at any time on a varying basis. Failing to account for allowances even when pay rates are correct can still lead to underpayment.

Why is Fairtime the best timesheet software for Legal Services Award employers?

For an all-in-one integrated timesheet solution that can interpret award changes as soon as they are announced, look no further than Fairtime. 

Our compliance features are available to all managers and supervisors so that you can discreetly monitor payroll compliance. Staff enjoy using Fairtime because the timesheets are simple and can auto save regular working patterns. 

Our Freemium plan lets you try out Fairtime to see if it’s a good fit for your business. Log your first timesheet once you register here.