Pay transparency laws in California, Washington, New York State, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland and Colorado require employers to put a pay range in the job posting — including postings for attorneys and legal staff.
That is law firm salary transparency in practice: under California's law, a posted range is the employer's good-faith estimate of the pay it reasonably expects on hire, not a promise.
Here is where the requirement applies, how firms set ranges, and how to use one in a negotiation.
Where salary ranges are required in law firm job postings
The posting-range requirements verified from primary sources cover California, Washington, New York State, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland and Colorado — all but New York's and Colorado's from statute text.
New York's is verified from the state labor department's pay-transparency page; the Colorado statute page was blocked to our research, so its requirement is verified from the SB23-105 bill text.
The laws govern job postings generally — they are employment statutes, not law-firm-specific ones — so they reach a law firm's posting for an associate, a paralegal or a legal secretary the same as any other opening.
Employer-size thresholds differ by state: New York's starts at businesses with four or more employees, California, Washington and Illinois at 15 or more, Massachusetts at 25 or more in the Commonwealth, and Minnesota at 30 or more.
| State | Employers covered | The posting must include | Statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 15 or more employees | The pay scale for the position in any job posting | Labor Code 432.3(c)(3) |
| Washington | 15 or more employees | The wage scale or salary range, plus a general description of benefits and other compensation | RCW 49.58.110 |
| New York State | Businesses with 4 or more employees | Compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers | Labor Law 194-b |
| Illinois | 15 or more employees | The pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; a hyperlink to a public page with the information satisfies the rule | 820 ILCS 112/10(b-25) |
| Minnesota | 30 or more employees at one or more sites in Minnesota | The starting salary range, plus a general description of benefits and other compensation | Minn. Stat. 181.173 |
| Massachusetts | 25 or more employees in the Commonwealth | The pay range for the position in the posting | G.L. c.149 §105F |
| Maryland | Employers — no size floor appears in the statute section we read; check the definitions | The wage range and a general description of benefits, set in good faith, in each public or internal posting | Md. Lab. & Empl. 3-304.2 |
| Colorado | Size threshold not confirmed in the sources we read | Compensation and benefits information in job-opportunity postings; SB23-105 (effective January 1, 2024) added further posting rules | Equal Pay for Equal Work Act |
Two mechanics are worth knowing as a reader of postings.
In California, an employer that uses a third party to post the job must give that third party the pay scale to include — the pay scale is meant to appear with the posting itself, not stay on the firm's own careers page.
In Illinois, a hyperlink to a public page with the pay scale and benefits satisfies the statute, which means on some postings the required numbers sit one click away rather than in the body.
The map is not closed.
Compliance trackers also report posting-range laws in New Jersey, Vermont, Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Maine and Delaware — those come from secondary trackers rather than the statute texts, so confirm them with the state's labor department before relying on the details.
New York City also has its own local pay transparency law, which our sources did not cover; check the city's rules if the role sits there.
Rules move — verify with the state
How firms set the ranges they post
What the law demands of the number is narrower than what it demands of the posting.
California's statute defines the term: a pay scale is a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range that the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position upon hire.
Maryland likewise requires the wage range to be set in good faith.
The other statutes cited here govern what gets disclosed — none of the facts behind this page prescribes the method a firm must use to build its range.
That makes the posted range a figure anchored in the employer's own expectation for the position, not a market standard with a published source.
Two firms hiring the same associate role in the same city can arrive at their ranges differently, and the posting does not tell you which benchmark — if any — sat behind the number.
The range is also narrower than the job's total compensation.
California's pay scale is expressly a salary or hourly wage range, and in Washington, Illinois, Minnesota and Maryland the benefits description is a separate disclosure the statute requires alongside it.
Read the posting for what the range is said to cover, and treat bonus, benefits and everything else the firm pays as pieces to ask about rather than assumptions to make.
Reading a range: what it tells you and what it doesn't
Start with what a range is: the firm's own written range for the position.
In California it is, by statute, a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage the firm reasonably expects to pay on hire.
It is information about the employer's expectation for that position — not a promise of a specific number, and not a statement of where you personally would land inside it.
To judge one, compare it to a named dataset with its date attached.
NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey put the median first-year associate base salary at $200,000 as of January 1, 2025 — a large-firm-heavy sample — while at firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, $150,000 or less was the most common first-year salary, reported by 44% of offices.
NALP's separate Class of 2025 salary curve makes the same point another way: it is bimodal, with salaries of $60,000–$100,000 making up 50.0% of the 22,715 reported full-time salaries (across all employer types, not only law firms) and $225,000 accounting for 21.5%.
The same title — first-year associate — sits in two different markets, and a posted range can be normal in one and low in the other.
A range also does not tell you whether the figure is base only, what the bonus formula pays, or why the firm set the band as wide as it did.
And where the law does not require one, a posting without a range is silence, not signal: the missing number tells you nothing about the pay on its own.
Postings that do show their range are the easiest place to start: browse attorney jobs with pay shown and compare the bands to survey data before you apply.
Check what the number covers
Using a posted range in salary negotiation
The negotiation value of a posted range is that it is the firm's own number.
An ask anchored inside the employer's published range is anchored to a figure the firm wrote about itself — you are not guessing what it had in mind.
The direct questions follow: where in the range does this offer sit, and what would place it higher?
If the offer arrives at or above the top of the band, the range is still the firm's own stated range for the position — so ask what the figure covered, and move the conversation to the parts of the package the posting does not price: the bonus formula, benefits, bar dues and CLE, the start date.
In a state with no posting rule, asking what range is budgeted for the role costs nothing and gets you the information the law would force into the posting elsewhere.
The scripts, the market-data benchmarks and the bonus-formula asks are covered in our guide to negotiating salary — the posted range is one more input that playbook puts to work.
Career information, not legal advice. Posting-range rules change and differ by state; the rules above are the versions our research read as of October 2026. Confirm the current requirement with the state labor department for the job's location before you rely on it.