Lawyer salary by years of experience follows a different curve on every track.
On the BigLaw market scale, base pay climbs a published rung with each class year — $235,000 for first-years up to $455,000 for eighth-years on the scale effective July 1, 2026, per a firm memo as reported in legal press.
Small firms, government and other employers advance pay on their own schedules instead.
This page walks each track from year 1 to partner.
Years 1–3: starting pay and the first rungs
The first three years start from two very different floors.
In NALP's Class of 2025 salary curve, 50.0% of the 22,715 reported full-time starting salaries fell between $60,000 and $100,000, while 21.5% sat at exactly $225,000.
The curve spans every employer type, not just firms — the bimodal spread our starting salaries page breaks down by employer type.
Among the offices reporting to NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey, the median first-year base salary was $200,000 as of January 1, 2025, and $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers.
At firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, the most common first-year salary was $150,000 or less, reported by 44% of offices.
In six cities — Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and the Washington, DC area — the median first-year salary was $225,000.
On the market scale Milbank set in its June 2, 2026 memo, as reported in legal press, the first three class years run $235,000 (the Classes of 2026 and 2025), $245,000 (the Class of 2024) and $270,000 (the Class of 2023).
Each class moves up a rung as its class year advances — what those rungs are worth further up the ladder is the next section's subject.
Years 4–7 and the senior associate climb
From the middle classes onward, the scale steepens.
The base-salary scale Milbank announced effective July 1, 2026, per the firm memo as reported by legal press, runs:
| Years of experience | Class of | Base salary |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 2026 and 2025 | $235,000 |
| Year 2 | 2024 | $245,000 |
| Year 3 | 2023 | $270,000 |
| Year 4 | 2022 | $320,000 |
| Year 5 | 2021 | $385,000 |
| Year 6 | 2020 | $410,000 |
| Year 7 | 2019 | $440,000 |
| Year 8 | 2018 | $455,000 |
The Classes of 2026 and 2025 share the first-year rate, and the Class of 2018 sits at the eighth-year top of the scale.
Per the same memo, the 2026 raise added $10,000 to the first four class years and $20,000 to fifth- through eighth-years — the scheduled raises themselves widen as classes climb, and the previous scale had run $225,000 to $435,000.
It is a structure, not a law, and not a uniform one.
Katten's schedule topped out at $440,000 for the Class of 2019 and above, and Susman Godfrey set its first-year base at $240,000 — both from a legal-press associate compensation scorecard.
Whatever title a firm attaches to these later class years, the senior associate salary page carries what the federal series can support — one occupation-wide figure for all lawyers (SOC 23-1011), every experience level in a single median.
And scales like this one are lockstep — the raise arrives with the class year rather than with a review — while merit systems decide raises differently; the tradeoffs are on our lockstep vs merit raises page.
Scales move — these are firm memos, not government data
Of counsel and non-equity partner
After the associate classes, the ladder forks into of counsel roles and non-equity partnerships — rungs where pay stops being a published class-year salary.
Our research found no public, multi-firm pay scale for either rung in the sources read for this page: the associate classes share a common published ladder, and neither of these stages has one in our sources.
Federal wage data does not isolate the rungs either — the lawyer series is a single occupation-wide estimate (SOC 23-1011), and BLS's OEWS estimates exclude self-employed workers, so they do not measure solo practitioners' or equity partners' income.
What of counsel and non-equity partners earn is therefore set firm by firm — each firm's own offer letter, not a table our sources carry.
Equity partner
Equity partners own a share of the firm, and their income comes out of the firm's profits rather than off a salary schedule.
That takes them out of every wage statistic on this page: the national lawyer median of $159,670 and even the 90th-percentile figure of $351,600 (BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 23-1011) describe employed lawyers, and the series excludes the self-employed as well as owners and partners of unincorporated businesses — no BLS figure describes what partners take home.
What an equity partner actually takes home depends on the firm's profitability and its own system for paying owners — our partner pay guide covers how partners are paid, and the equity-versus-non-equity split gets its own comparison on the related page below.
Government step increases
Where a government employer pays on a step or grade schedule, raises follow that schedule's own rules rather than a market-scale reset.
The sources read for this page do not document how any particular government schedule advances, so the employer's own published pay schedule is the place to confirm when and how a step is earned.
For level, the May 2025 OEWS medians for lawyers (SOC 23-1011) were $178,380 in the federal executive branch, $131,350 in local government and $115,330 in state government — the state and local figures exclude schools and hospitals — against $157,870 in legal services, the industry law firms sit in.
Each is a median across that sector's whole workforce, every experience level mixed together — the local-government figure counts prosecutors, public defenders and city attorneys side by side — so they describe sector levels rather than the year-over-year curve.
The court-employed series next to it reads differently: Judicial Law Clerks (SOC 23-1012) had a median annual wage of $64,920 in May 2025.
One more part of government compensation runs through loan forgiveness rather than the paycheck.
Under PSLF, eligibility follows the employer — U.S. government organizations at any level and 501(c)(3) nonprofits qualify, private law firms do not — and the remaining Direct Loan balance is forgiven after 120 qualifying monthly payments, with full-time meaning a weekly average of at least 30 hours.
What speeds up a lawyer's raises
Base pay follows the schedules above; total pay moves faster on the levers around it.
- Class-year automatics. On a lockstep scale the next rung arrives with the class year — and the 2026 raise added $20,000 to the fifth- through eighth-year rungs, twice the $10,000 added to the first four class years, so the scheduled raises widen with seniority.
- Billable hours. Cadwalader paid 120% of the year-end bonus to associates with at least 2,200 billable hours in 2025, as reported by the ABA Journal, and reporting on the 2026 raise described firms tying the scale to 1,900- or 2,000-hour expectations — Norton Rose Fulbright at 1,900, McDermott and Quinn Emanuel at 2,000 — per a legal-press scorecard.
- Bonuses. Cravath's November 2025 memo set year-end bonuses of $15,000 to $115,000 by class year (the Class of 2025 amount prorated) plus special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000 — totals of $21,000 to $140,000 on top of base, as reported by the ABA Journal. The 2026 year-end amounts had not been announced as of October 2, 2026 in the sources read.
- Clerkship credit. In NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey, 73% of law offices offered judicial clerkship bonuses, with amounts varying by clerkship type.
- Sector moves. The level itself differs by sector: lawyers in corporate head offices (Management of Companies and Enterprises) had a May 2025 median of $223,560, against $157,870 in legal services — same series, same SOC, same release.
Every number on this page carries its date because pay moves: firm memos set scales, the latest NALP survey predates the 2026 raise, and federal statistics describe whole workforces.
Confirm the current figure with the source that owns it — the firm's memo, NALP's releases or BLS — before you make a decision on it.
Career information, not legal advice. Figures are as of the dates named — BLS OEWS May 2025, NALP's 2025 surveys, and firm memos as reported in legal press through October 2, 2026.