Bar dues are the recurring fee that keeps an attorney's license active, and each state sets its own: for 2026, active California licensees pay $598, Texas bills its newly licensed members $74–$258 by years in practice plus fees, and Illinois charges $385 for active registration — lawyers admitted before January 1, 2025.
New York runs on a different clock — $375 every two years.
Here are the annual fees our research verified, who charges them, and how employers fit in.
What bar dues are
Bar dues are the recurring fee that keeps a law license active after admission.
The one-time charges — the exam application, the character and fitness investigation — buy admission once; the annual payment keeps you on the rolls after that.
What the payment is called follows whoever collects it: Texas bills membership dues and Florida membership fees, California charges an annual license fee, and Illinois and New York collect registration fees.
This page uses the names interchangeably — bar dues, attorney license fee, bar membership fee — for the recurring payment that keeps you licensed in your state.
The fee can also be more than a fee.
California's State Bar folds its license fee into a six-part annual renewal that runs February 1 to March 30: record verification, Client Trust Account Protection Program reporting, the fee payment itself, MCLE compliance reporting for your reporting group, a civility oath declaration and pro bono hours reporting.
Missing the final deadline is not a paperwork problem — it brings late fees, and the license can be suspended, leaving you ineligible to practice law.
The line between admission and dues can blur at the start, too: Montana's $2,475 admission-on-motion fee includes your first year of bar dues.
The one-time side of the ledger — the exam, the character and fitness investigation, score transfers — is covered in our bar admission guide, and the one-time fees in our bar exam cost guide.
Fee schedules change — confirm before you pay
Bar dues by state: the fees we verified
We found no national fee in our research: every figure below is set by a state's own bar, court or registration authority.
The table gathers the annual license, dues and registration fees our research verified on state bar and registration pages and in published regulation text as of October 2, 2026 — six jurisdictions with confirmed amounts, plus Montana, where the research confirmed the payment structure but captured no dollar figures.
| State (fee year) | Active license | Inactive or reduced status |
|---|---|---|
| California — 2026 | $598, due March 30 | $205 |
| Texas — FY 2026–27, newly licensed members | $74 (0–3 years in practice), $162 (3–5 years), $258 (5+ years), plus a $65 legal services fee; new licensees also pay a one-time $25 license fee | $55 dues + $25 license fee ($80) |
| Illinois — 2026 | $385 for lawyers admitted before January 1, 2025; no fee for 2026 for lawyers admitted since then | Not confirmed in our research |
| Florida — proposed FY 2026–27 | $265 (tentatively approved budget) | $175 |
| Idaho — 2026 | $485 from the fourth full year of licensure (house counsel included); $350 in years one to three; active members also pay a Client Assistance Fund assessment | $170 |
| Montana | Supreme Court license tax plus State Bar of Montana dues — amounts not confirmed in our research | Not confirmed in our research |
| New York — every two years | $375 per registration, due within 30 days after your birthday | No fee for retired attorneys |
Several of these numbers come with conditions worth reading.
Texas's tiers are the schedule for attorneys newly licensed from June 2026 — lawyers licensed before May 1, 2026 are directed to the Membership Department for their amounts.
Florida's figures sit in The Florida Bar's proposed 2026–27 budget, tentatively approved — confirm final adoption with the Bar before relying on them.
Idaho prices by license year and layers an assessment on top for active members.
New York's $375 recurs on a two-year clock, not an annual one.
And Montana's row lists no amounts because its structure is two separate payments — a Supreme Court license tax plus State Bar of Montana dues — and our research did not confirm either figure.
Where the table says not confirmed, that is exactly what it means: not zero, just unsourced — the number to rely on is the one your state's bar or registration authority confirms.
Why there is no 50-state table or national average here
Mandatory vs voluntary bars
The labels attached to bar dues describe who the check is written to.
A mandatory bar — also called an integrated bar — is how our sources describe the state bars of Idaho and Montana, where a payment to the bar is among what active lawyers owe.
Our research did not verify which states run a voluntary bar instead, or how the license payment is structured where one exists, so this section sticks to the verified examples.
Both mandatory-bar examples on this page come from the verified fee sources.
Idaho is a mandatory (integrated) bar: the Idaho State Bar's active members pay their license fee plus a Client Assistance Fund assessment, and file trust account and malpractice insurance disclosure forms alongside it.
Montana layers two payments — a Supreme Court license tax plus dues to the State Bar of Montana, a mandatory bar.
In those two states, the bar payment is not an optional add-on membership.
In other states the recurring payment takes other forms.
Illinois's annual registration fee goes to the ARDC, and New York attorneys re-register with the Office of Court Administration every two years at $375 per registration.
Texas bills membership dues and Florida membership fees; California charges an annual license fee through a renewal that also collects MCLE compliance reporting and Client Trust Account Protection Program reporting at the same time.
For your budget, the label matters less than the schedule: it tells you who the money goes to and what comes bundled with it — Idaho's active members pay a Client Assistance Fund assessment alongside their license fee; California's renewal collects your compliance reporting in the same pass — but only the current fee schedule tells you the amount.
Confirm both the structure and the figure with your state's bar or registration authority.
Active vs inactive fees
Where our verified sources price both statuses, inactive status costs less than active.
California charges inactive licensees $205 against the active $598.
Idaho charges inactive members $170 against $485 from the fourth full year (or $350 in the first three).
Florida's proposed budget prices inactive membership at $175 against $265 active.
And Texas's incoming members who request inactive status pay $80 all in — $55 in dues plus the $25 license fee.
The discount can defer cost rather than erase it.
Idaho's inactive members do not have to meet the CLE requirement while inactive, but returning to active status after one to three years means completing 10 extra credits, and after three or more years, 30 extra credits.
The cheaper status is a loan against your next return, not a waiver.
Not every state calls the non-practicing tier inactive.
New York's registration schedule prices one such status explicitly: retired attorneys pay nothing.
Texas's $80 figure, for its part, applies to new members requesting inactive status — a different population from the tiered dues its newly licensed active members pay.
Does your firm pay bar dues?
Our research captured no data on how often law firms pay their attorneys' bar dues — no verified share of employers that cover the fee, reimburse it, or leave it with the lawyer — so this section stays practical instead of pretending a norm exists.
If you are the attorney, remember what the fee attaches to: your license, not your job.
Whoever writes the check, the deadline and its consequences are the licensee's — California's renewal warns that missing the final deadline can suspend your license and leave you ineligible to practice law.
If you are interviewing, make the question concrete at the offer stage: does the firm pay the bar directly or reimburse you, which status and which state does that cover, and does the answer change after your first year?
Get it in the offer letter.
If you are paying it yourself, at least one bar discounts the fee on need: California lets active licensees with gross individual income under $60,478.35 request a 25% fee reduction, and waives 50% of the fee at household income of $20,000 or less (State Bar rules 2.15 and 2.16).
If you run the firm, the arithmetic is per attorney and per state.
Each licensed lawyer generates a renewal on the cadence their state sets — annually for every state here that publishes an annual figure, every two years in New York — at the amounts in the table above.
Decide what the firm covers, write it into the offer, and note that the fee is not the whole compliance load everywhere: California's renewal also collects MCLE compliance reporting and Client Trust Account Protection Program reporting, and the tiering by years in practice (Texas) or license year (Idaho) means two associates in the same state can owe different amounts.
Career information, not legal advice. Fee amounts, statuses and renewal rules are set by each state's bar or registration authority — the State Bar of California, the ARDC, The Florida Bar, the Idaho State Bar, the State Bar of Montana and the Office of Court Administration among those named above. Confirm the current figures with yours before you pay or change status.