UK

United Kingdom · Legal · Mid-Level (2-5 years)

Head of Legal Operations

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, a real day, what you decide, how you're judged, how people get here and where they go next. Then the part no course gives you: twelve AI tutors who learn your work.

  • Experience bandMid-Level (2-5 years)
  • Direct reportsNo direct reports
  • Reports toSenior Head of Legal Operations
  • UK framework levelUsually a coordinator, or early in a professional job

Also advertised as Legal Operations Analyst · Legal Process Specialist · Legal Tech Administrator

Built on an analysis of 43,079 real UK job descriptions · grounded in qualifications employers recognise

Start with a free Future Fluency check, tuned to Head of Legal Operations

Ten quick questions, one per Future Fluency, asked against this role rather than a generic one. About five minutes, and no card.

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1What this role really is

This role is all about making our Legal department run smoother and smarter. You'll be the person who dives into how we do things today, spots the clunky bits, and figures out better ways. Think of it as being the efficiency engine behind our legal team, ensuring our lawyers can focus on the law, not the admin. You'll be the go-to for making our legal tech actually work for us, not against us, and you'll help us keep a tight grip on our legal spend. It's a critical role for anyone who loves solving problems and making a real, measurable difference in a professional services environment.

2What you'd actually use

The tools this job runs on, and how well you'd need to know each one.

Thomson Reuters Legal Tracker (or similar e-billing)Intermediate

Entering new matters, processing invoices, running pre-built spend reports, ensuring data hygiene, and troubleshooting basic user queries.

Ironclad (or similar CLM)Intermediate

Managing user permissions, shepherding contracts through workflows, acting as first-line support for business users, and tracking contract status.

Tableau or Power BIIntermediate

Using pre-built dashboards to answer business questions about legal spend or matter trends, exporting data for further analysis, and performing basic data cleaning.

SharePoint (or similar KM platform)Intermediate

Uploading and tagging documents, managing permissions, maintaining folder structures, and building basic team sites for knowledge sharing.

Microsoft ExcelAdvanced

Performing complex data cleaning, manipulation, and analysis using formulas, pivot tables, and VLOOKUPs for various legal operations reports.

3What you get to decide, and how that grows

Power in a job isn't your title. It's what you're allowed to decide. Here's how it grows as you move up.

The choiceComing inWhere you are nowThe step above
Invoice ApprovalNone, all invoices reviewed by senior team.Approve routine, compliant invoices up to £5K. Escalate anything over this, or any non-compliant invoices, to Senior Head of Legal Operations.Approve invoices up to £25K. Authorise exceptions to OCGs with justification. Oversee the entire invoice approval process.
Process Change ImplementationSuggest minor improvements to supervisor.Propose and, with approval from Senior Head of Legal Operations, implement minor process tweaks (e.g., updating an intake form, refining a data entry step).Design and lead implementation of significant process overhauls (e.g., new contract review workflow). Obtain buy-in from legal leadership.
Legal Tech ConfigurationFollow instructions for user setup or basic data entry.Configure standard reports, dashboards, and user permissions within existing legal tech platforms. Troubleshoot common user issues.Design and implement new workflows, manage clause libraries, and lead the configuration of new modules or integrations for legal tech.
Vendor Selection/RenewalNo involvement.Provide data and analysis to support vendor reviews. Assist with gathering requirements for new tools. Renew minor subscriptions (under £1K) with approval.Lead the evaluation and selection of new legal tech vendors (up to £50K budget). Negotiate contract renewals and service level agreements.

4How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, honestly: the hard targets, how often each one is actually looked at, and the quiet human signals that never make it onto a dashboard.

Invoice Compliance Rate
Percentage of outside counsel invoices that fully comply with our Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs) on first submission.
Target · >95%

If we review 100 invoices and only 3 have issues that need correcting, that's a 97% compliance rate. We want to see fewer rejected line items and faster approval times.

Matter Management Data Accuracy
Error rate in key data fields (e.g., matter type, responsible lawyer, budget allocated) within our matter management system.
Target · <2% error rate

An audit of 200 active matters shows only 3 matters with incorrect budget entries or missing responsible lawyers, resulting in a 1.5% error rate. This means our reporting is reliable.

Legal Spend Variance (Budget vs. Actual)
The difference between the budgeted amount for outside counsel and actual spend for specific matters or categories.
Target · Within ±10% of budget

A litigation matter budgeted at £50,000 comes in at £53,000, which is a 6% variance. You're helping us understand why these differences occur and how to forecast better.

Legal Intake Triage Time
Average time taken from a business request entering our 'Legal Front Door' to being assigned to the correct legal team member.
Target · <24 hours

Over a week, 50 new requests come in. If the average time to assign them is 18 hours, you're helping the business get legal support quickly, preventing bottlenecks.

Process Improvement Impact
The tangible benefits realised from process changes you've identified and helped implement.
  • Positive feedback from legal team members on reduced manual effort
  • documented time savings in specific workflows (e.g., contract review, litigation hold initiation)
  • successful adoption of new process steps by the team.
Legal Tech User Satisfaction
How happy our legal team is with the usability and functionality of the legal technology you support.
  • Informal feedback during check-ins
  • fewer support tickets related to basic system usage
  • lawyers proactively asking for new features or training
  • positive comments in internal surveys (if applicable).
Data Reporting Clarity & Utility
The quality and usefulness of the reports and dashboards you produce for the legal leadership team.
  • Legal leadership regularly references your reports in strategic discussions
  • requests for deeper dives or specific data points based on your initial findings
  • clear understanding of presented insights without excessive explanation
  • reports are actionable.
Vendor Relationship Management
The effectiveness of your interactions with legal tech vendors and outside counsel.
  • Positive feedback from vendors on clear communication
  • timely resolution of issues
  • successful negotiation of minor contract renewals or feature requests
  • smooth onboarding of new firms or tech.

5Would you like it

The honest version. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy
Making Things Work Better

You'll get a genuine sense of satisfaction from identifying a clunky process, streamlining it, and seeing the immediate positive impact on the team's daily work. It's about removing friction and making life easier for our lawyers.

Successfully automating a part of the invoice review process, cutting down manual checking time by 20%, and hearing positive feedback from the team.

Solving Complex Puzzles

This role is full of 'how do we get X system to talk to Y system?' or 'how can we get this data to show us Z?' If you love unpicking complicated operational challenges and finding elegant solutions, you'll be in your element.

Figuring out how to pull matter budget data from our e-billing system and combine it with actual spend from Finance for a unified reporting dashboard.

Driving Tangible Impact

You're not just pushing papers; your work directly contributes to cost savings, efficiency gains, and better decision-making for the legal department and the business. You'll see the numbers change because of what you do.

Presenting a quarterly report that shows a measurable reduction in outside counsel spend due to improved billing guideline enforcement.

What frustrates people
  • The 'Non-Lawyer' Discount: Constantly having to justify your value and expertise in a culture that instinctively defers to those with a legal degree, even on business and technology matters.
  • Herding Technophobes: Trying to convince brilliant, highly-paid lawyers to change the way they've worked for 20 years and adopt a new piece of technology is a masterclass in frustration.
  • Garbage In, Gospel Out: You spend months building a beautiful spend analytics dashboard, only to have the insights undermined because lawyers are lazy about entering their matter data correctly in the source system.
  • The 'Quick Question' Ambush: Your day is meticulously planned, but it gets completely derailed by a stream of 'quick questions' from lawyers that are actually complex, urgent operational problems in disguise.
What this role does not give you
  • Direct legal practice or client-facing legal advice. You're supporting the practice, not doing it.
  • A static, predictable routine. Priorities shift, and you'll need to adapt.
  • Immediate, universal buy-in for every new idea. Change takes time and persistence.
  • A role where you can avoid data or technology. It's central to what we do.

6Who you work with

This role directly impacts the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the entire Legal department. By streamlining processes and managing technology, you'll free up our lawyers' time, allowing them to focus on high-value legal work rather than administrative tasks. Your work will also provide the data needed for strategic decisions on legal spend and resource allocation, ultimately contributing to the company's financial health and risk management posture. Get it right, and the legal team becomes a genuine business enabler; get it wrong, and it's a cost centre.

Inside the business
  • General Counsel and Senior Legal Team
  • Finance Department (especially Accounts Payable)
  • IT Department (for system integrations and support)
  • Procurement Team (for vendor onboarding)
  • Business Unit Leads (Sales, Product, HR)
Outside the business
  • Outside Counsel (law firms)
  • Legal Technology Vendors
  • Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs)

7What you need before you start

Not a wish list. The things you would be expected to already have.

  • At least 2 years of experience in a legal operations, paralegal, or legal administrative role where you've actively used legal technology and managed processes.
  • Demonstrable experience with data analysis, ideally using Excel, and some exposure to BI tools like Tableau or Power BI.
  • A proven track record of identifying and solving operational problems, even if it's just suggesting a better way to organise files.
  • Experience working with legal professionals and understanding their unique needs and challenges.
  • Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage multiple tasks and deadlines independently.

8What to practise next

Where the job is going, and what to do about it starting this week.

Advanced Data Modelling & Visualisation

Legal departments are becoming more data-driven. Moving beyond basic reports to build more sophisticated models and compelling visualisations will be crucial for influencing strategic decisions.

Relational Data Models · DAX/M Language (Power BI) · Storytelling with Data

  • This quarter: Take an intermediate Power BI or Tableau course focusing on data modelling and advanced calculations.
  • Next 6 months: Start building one custom, interactive dashboard from scratch, pulling data from multiple sources.
  • Within a year: Present your custom dashboard and its insights to the legal leadership team, gathering feedback for iteration.

Quick win: Recreate an existing static report in Power BI or Tableau, adding interactive filters and drill-downs. It immediately makes the data more accessible.

9Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up
  • Attending industry webinars or virtual conferences on legal technology and operations.
  • Joining online communities or forums for legal ops professionals to learn from peers.
  • Taking online courses in data analytics (e.g., advanced Excel, Power BI) or process improvement.
  • Reading industry publications and thought leadership pieces on the future of legal services.

10How the AI economy is changing work like this

Before we ask anything of you, here's what we can already say about AI and work of this kind:

The new skill this role is being asked for: Prompt Engineering for Legal Tasks

Generative AI is already transforming how legal teams draft documents, summarise cases, and conduct research. Being able to 'talk' to these AI tools effectively will be a game-changer for efficiency.

We'll only ever tell you what we can actually back up. No hype, no scare tactics.

Your PlanIllustration

Built for Head of Legal Operations

2 units that map to this job, from the qualifications that cover it.

  1. Providing legal advice and casework in discrimination lawProQual Awarding Body · covers 5 of 9 standardsLevel 4
  2. Providing initial money and debt legal adviceCambridge OCR · covers 5 of 9 standardsLevel 3
These are the real units behind this job, in the order they rank for it. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

The rising capability

Zavmo analysis

What's rising in its place

This is where the work is heading, and the higher pay with it. Get fluent here and the shift stops being a threat and starts being your edge.

Prompt Engineering for Legal Tasks

Generative AI is already transforming how legal teams draft documents, summarise cases, and conduct research. Being able to 'talk' to these AI tools effectively will be a game-changer for efficiency.

  • Clear Instruction Design
  • Context Provision
  • Output Validation
  • Iterative Prompting

Low-Code/No-Code Workflow Automation

Legal departments need to be agile. Being able to build simple automations without needing a developer means we can respond faster to business needs and streamline processes more quickly.

  • Workflow Mapping
  • Platform Familiarity
  • Integration Basics
  • User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

  • Legal Spend Management & Analytics
  • Vendor & Law Firm Management Support
  • Process Optimisation (Lean for Legal)
  • Cross-Functional Project Support

The pathway

How you actually get there, here

How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.

  1. 1

    Legal Administrator / Paralegal

    2-4 years

    Skills to master

    • Strong organisational skills, familiarity with legal processes and terminology, basic legal tech usage, attention to detail in document management and invoice processing.

    You're ready to move on when

    • You've started identifying inefficiencies in your daily tasks and suggesting improvements.
    • You're the 'go-to' person for tech issues among your peers.
    • You've taken initiative to learn more about legal technology or data analysis.
    • You're comfortable working independently on defined tasks.
  2. 2

    Business Analyst (from another department)

    2-3 years

    Skills to master

    • Process mapping, data analysis, requirements gathering, stakeholder communication, and an interest in applying these to a legal context.

    You're ready to move on when

    • You've successfully delivered process improvement projects in your current role.
    • You're keen to learn the specifics of legal operations and legal tech.
    • You can demonstrate how your analytical skills translate to a new domain.
    • You're a strong communicator and can adapt your style to different audiences.
  3. 3

    Legal Tech Support / Implementation Specialist

    2-3 years

    Skills to master

    • Deep knowledge of specific legal tech platforms, troubleshooting, user training, and understanding how technology solves business problems.

    You're ready to move on when

    • You've successfully supported users on legal tech platforms and resolved complex issues.
    • You understand the 'why' behind the tech, not just the 'how'.
    • You're comfortable with data extraction and basic reporting from these systems.
    • You're looking to move from pure support to more strategic operational improvement.

11Where this role leads

The long view:Your journey in Legal Operations starts here, but it certainly doesn't end here. We're looking for someone with the drive and curiosity to not just do the job, but to help us define the future of how legal work gets done. If you're ready for a challenging, rewarding career where you can genuinely make a difference, then we'd love to hear from you.

Pay & demand

Pay and demand for this role will appear here, each figure traced to a named authoritative source (e.g. the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, under the Open Government Licence). We don’t show numbers we can’t attribute.

The ten Future Fluencies

Zavmo analysis

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

A qualification proves you can do the job as it's defined today. These ten are what decide whether you're still the obvious person for it in five years. They're the capabilities employers are now writing into senior roles faster than people are learning them. Zavmo weaves them through whatever you study, so you come out with both: the credential and the fluency.

The highlighted ones are the Fluencies your role leans on hardest, from how Head of Legal Operations is actually changing. In about two minutes, the free confidence check asks where you stand on each of the ten. That's the whole check, and it's what makes the plan yours rather than generic.

Where it leads

Roles this leads to

The record names a next step, but the catalogue has no page for it yet:

  • Senior Head of Legal Operations (Level 003)

12The team that's yours

No two people are taught the same way. This is one-to-one, not one-to-many.

Zavmo is a hyper-personalised AI learning platform. Twelve virtual tutors, each with a different way of teaching, and one orchestration agent that picks the right one for the moment. So every single lesson is shaped around you, your role, and the way you learn. Not a course everyone sits through. A conversation built for you, and no one else.

…and nine more, matched to you after your first chat. Meet all twelve

Start free and meet yours

13What it feels like

A conversation, not a course

Because your tutor knows your role, your projects and your last session, learning sounds like this. And it's different for every single person:

Providing legal advice and casework in discrimination lawLevel 4

Applied to your work in Head of Legal Operations

By completing this unit, learners will understand discrimination law, procedures for tribunals, alternatives to tribunals, proceedings for non-employment discrimination, and the use of ‘multiple head’ cases.

How the thinking builds
  1. Remember
  2. Understand
  3. Apply
  4. Analyse
  5. Evaluate
  6. Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

  1. Your actual work Every lesson is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
  2. What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
  3. The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
  4. How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
  5. Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

DemonstrateIllustration

Evidenced on your work in Head of Legal Operations

You do not finish by watching something. You finish by showing it on the work you already do, against the measures this job is judged on.

  • Invoice Compliance RatePercentage of outside counsel invoices that fully comply with our Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs) on first submission.If we review 100 invoices and only 3 have issues that need correcting, that's a 97% compliance rate. We want to see fewer rejected line items and faster approval times.>95%
  • Matter Management Data AccuracyError rate in key data fields (e.g., matter type, responsible lawyer, budget allocated) within our matter management system.An audit of 200 active matters shows only 3 matters with incorrect budget entries or missing responsible lawyers, resulting in a 1.5% error rate. This means our reporting is reliable.<2% error rate
  • Legal Spend Variance (Budget vs. Actual)The difference between the budgeted amount for outside counsel and actual spend for specific matters or categories.A litigation matter budgeted at £50,000 comes in at £53,000, which is a 6% variance. You're helping us understand why these differences occur and how to forecast better.Within ±10% of budget
  • Legal Intake Triage TimeAverage time taken from a business request entering our 'Legal Front Door' to being assigned to the correct legal team member.Over a week, 50 new requests come in. If the average time to assign them is 18 hours, you're helping the business get legal support quickly, preventing bottlenecks.<24 hours
These are this job's own measures, with its own targets. Nothing is marked evidenced, because nobody has started this yet. Yours would fill in from the work you bring.

Your passport

This isn't a certificate you file away. It's a passport to the life you're designing.

Every credit you earn and every fluency you build adds up: evidence where it counts, carried with you. Zavmo keeps the map: where you are, where you're heading, and the next step, at your pace, around your life. From Head of Legal Operations to Senior Head of Legal Operations (Level 003), and whatever you decide comes after.

Level 3 · in progressAI Fluency→ Senior Head of Legal Operations (Level 003)→ your design
Where this takes you

Your journey in Legal Operations starts here, but it certainly doesn't end here. We're looking for someone with the drive and curiosity to not just do the job, but to help us define the future of how legal work gets done. If you're ready for a challenging, rewarding career where you can genuinely make a difference, then we'd love to hear from you.

See Your Progress GrowIllustration
Head of Legal Operations
  • Legal Spend Management & Analytics
  • Vendor & Law Firm Management Support
  • Process Optimisation (Lean for Legal)
  • Cross-Functional Project Support
This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

14The detail, folded away

Everything else the record holds

The career branches in full, how AI is already showing up in the day-to-day, and the questions people ask about this job. Here when you want them, out of the way while you decide.

Where it leads next, rung by rung

Where it leads

The career path, and where it branches

Head of Legal Operations is a start, not a ceiling. Each step below asks for new skills and hands back more autonomy.

  1. Senior Head of Legal Operations (Level 003)

    3-5 years

    You'll move from owning processes to improving systems and leading smaller projects end-to-end. Your scope will broaden, and you'll start mentoring junior team members.

    • Legal Technology Configuration (designing new workflows, managing clause libraries)
    • Advanced Analytics & Dashboard Building (creating custom dashboards from scratch)
    • Vendor Relationship Management (negotiating terms, managing performance)
Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

Imagine cutting down on the tedious, repetitive tasks that eat into your week, freeing you up to focus on strategic improvements. That's exactly what AI can do for Legal Operations.

We're not just talking about buzzwords; we're talking about practical, real-world applications of AI that can genuinely transform how our legal department runs. From automating invoice reviews to smarter contract analysis, AI is here to make your job more efficient and impactful.

Automated Invoice Review

AI scans outside counsel invoices against our Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs), instantly flagging non-compliant entries like block billing, vague descriptions, or incorrect rates. This means less manual scrubbing for you and faster, more accurate payments.

AI-Powered Contract Analysis

Use AI tools to quickly extract key clauses, dates, and obligations from contracts. Need to find all termination clauses across 500 agreements? AI can do it in minutes, saving you days of manual review during due diligence or urgent business queries.

Predictive Spend Forecasting

AI can analyse historical matter data (type, jurisdiction, law firm) to predict budgets for new litigation or M&A deals with much greater accuracy. This improves our financial planning and helps us avoid nasty surprises down the line.

First-Draft Playbook Generation

Use a Generative AI assistant to create the initial 80% draft of a new process playbook or internal guide (e.g., 'How to Onboard a New Law Firm'). You then refine it with your expertise, cutting down on initial drafting time significantly.

Common questions

Common questions

How do you become a Head of Legal Operations?

Common routes in include Legal Administrator / Paralegal (2-4 years), Business Analyst (from another department) (2-3 years) and Legal Tech Support / Implementation Specialist (2-3 years). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Head of Legal Operations progress to?

This role can lead on to Senior Head of Legal Operations (Level 003) (3-5 years), depending on the skills you build.

What level is a Head of Legal Operations in the UK?

This role aligns to RQF Level 3 on the UK framework, a guide to the depth of qualification it maps to, not a hard entry bar.

What new skills matter most for a Head of Legal Operations?

Increasingly, Prompt Engineering for Legal Tasks and Low-Code/No-Code Workflow Automation. These are the areas where the higher-paid, future-proof work is heading.

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most of them were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

What it costs

Less than one coaching session. Every month.

A single career-coaching hour costs more than a month of this, and it ends when the hour does. Zavmo doesn't. It's £70 a month, about £2.30 a day, for a companion that knows Head of Legal Operations, works on the job you actually do, and keeps going at your pace rather than a timetable's.

  • Searching and planning stay free. You only pay when you start learning.
  • Your credits are yours. Regulated, and they don't vanish when a subscription ends.
  • Cancel any time and billing stops. No notice period, no minimum term.

Your path, personalised

You have the map. Walking it is the part we do together.

This route runs to 9 national skill standards. That is a real journey.

Zavmo shapes a learning experience as unique as you are. It fits how you learn, your pace and the work you already do. Every step stays benchmarked to recognised national standards. That’s the plan for becoming a Head of Legal Operations: personal to you, and it still counts. The first steps are free.

Independent research finds well-designed intelligent tutoring performs nearly as well as one-to-one human tutoring: VanLehn (2011), Educational Psychologist.

A private tutor in the UK averages £35–40 an hour . Zavmo is £70/month.

A real plan on learn.zavmo.ai: Ofqual-regulated units, credits, and a three-month run at your own pace.
Start free No commitment. See your first steps free.

15Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 3

Same depth of qualification, different job. Useful if the work appeals but this particular role does not.

Other roles in Legal

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.

If you leave this industry

The skills you'll build in this role are highly transferable. Legal Operations is a growing field across all industries. You could move into similar roles in other large corporations, legal tech vendors, or even consulting firms specialising in legal department transformation. Your expertise in process, technology, and data will be valuable anywhere.

Not sure this is the right direction?

Work out what you actually want from work first, then come back and see which roles fit it. Takes about ten minutes.

This role profile is © 2026Growth Engineering Technologies Ltd. Built from UK occupational standards and regulated qualification data, and written for Zavmo.

You're not behind. You're right on time. The shift is only just beginning. Your role won't look the same in two years. Be the one who leads the change, not the one it happens to. Build my plan, free Here's the first ten minutes: a 2-minute confidence check → your personalised roadmap → meet the tutors matched to you. No card, cancel any time. No card. Build your plan, see your roadmap and meet the twelve tutors matched to you. All free. When you're ready to start learning, it's £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.