Lawyer salary numbers trace back to a short list of sources: the NALP salary survey for associate pay at law firms, the BLS's OEWS statistics for lawyer wages across industries, and the large-firm market scale that moves by memo.
Named reports from legal recruiting and consulting firms round out the set: partner compensation and in-house counsel pay are their subjects, and the public datasets above reach neither directly.
Each measures a different slice of the market, and each is reliable only for its own slice — here is what each measures, where it falls short, and how to use the right one.
The main surveys
Lawyer pay quotes trace back to four kinds of source.
Two are public datasets with published figures, one is a firm-by-firm salary grid, and the last is named compensation reports from legal recruiting and consulting firms.
Knowing which one stands behind a number is the first step in judging it.
- NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey — the associate-pay survey puts the median first-year associate base salary at $200,000 as of January 1, 2025, rising to $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers. NALP also publishes a separate salary curve of reported starting salaries — the Class of 2025 edition is the one cited below.
- BLS OEWS — the federal Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. Its May 2025 release, the latest, puts the national median wage for lawyers (SOC 23-1011) at $159,670.
- The large-firm market scale — not a survey but a base-salary grid set by firm memo and tracked by legal press. Per the memo as reported by legal press, Milbank set the current scale on June 2, 2026, effective July 1, 2026; it starts at $235,000 for first-years, and legal press now often calls it the Milbank scale.
- Named compensation reports from recruiting and consulting firms — equity partners' and solo practitioners' income sits outside OEWS, which covers wage-and-salary lawyers only, and NALP's associate survey covers associates. Named reports from legal recruiting and consulting firms address partner compensation and in-house counsel pay — the subjects their titles name. Two names in those searches are Major, Lindsey & Africa's partner compensation survey and BarkerGilmore's in-house counsel compensation report. Our research holds no verified figures from either publisher, so this page does not quote their numbers; read a publisher's methodology before relying on what it reports.
The first two are public datasets you can check yourself.
The second two demand more care, for different reasons the rest of this page covers.
What each one measures
Each source measures a different slice of the market, and the fastest way to misuse one is to quote it as if it covered the whole profession.
| Source | What it measures | Headline figure |
|---|---|---|
| NALP 2025 Associate Salary Survey | Median first-year associate base salary at reporting law offices | $200,000 as of January 1, 2025; $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers |
| NALP Class of 2025 salary curve | The spread of reported starting salaries across all employer types | 50.0% of 22,715 reported full-time salaries fall between $60,000 and $100,000; 21.5% sit at $225,000 |
| BLS OEWS, May 2025 (SOC 23-1011) | Median wage for lawyer jobs across every industry | $159,670 national median; 90th percentile about $351,600 (see the footnote caveat below) |
| The market scale (firm memos via legal press) | Base pay by class year at large firms paying market rate | $235,000 first-year base, effective July 1, 2026 |
The associate survey is a law-office instrument — its unit is the office and its subject is associate pay.
Around the base figure it also captures the pieces next to it: in the 2025 edition the most commonly reported first-year salary was $225,000, named by 32% of offices overall and by 45% of offices in firms of 701+ lawyers, and 73% of offices offered judicial clerkship bonuses.
The graduate salary curve is the wider lens.
NALP's curve collects reported starting salaries across employer types — not only law firms — and the Class of 2025 curve came back bimodal: one peak between $60,000 and $100,000, a second at $225,000.
Two markets, not one.
OEWS measures a different population altogether: every lawyer who works as an employee, in any industry — 754,500 of them in the May 2025 release.
That makes it the source for the slices the firm-side surveys cannot give you.
Its industry tables put lawyers in legal services at a median of $157,870, and lawyers in corporate head offices — the closest BLS proxy for in-house pay — at $223,560; across states, the median runs from $91,690 in Mississippi to $207,860 in New York.
Our lawyer salary data pages carry the full OEWS tables by role and state.
The market scale measures something narrower than any of them: the base grid at the large firms that pay market rate.
It moves by memo rather than by data collection, which is why it can move between survey editions — and why its numbers reach you through legal press rather than through a methodology page.
Limitations
None of these sources is wrong.
Each is limited in a specific direction, and the limits decide how far a number can be stretched.
- The associate survey skews large. Its sample of reporting offices is weighted toward large firms, so read the $200,000 median as a large-firm median, not a profession-wide one. NALP's graduate salary curve carries a related caveat of its own: large-firm salaries are more completely reported, so the curve's unadjusted mean overstates the true average starting salary by an estimated 5.5%.
- Every figure has a reference date. The associate survey's salaries are as of January 1, 2025 — before the July 1, 2026 market-scale raise took effect. A survey measures the market as it stood on its reference date; the scale moves between editions.
- Averages mislead in a bimodal market. When starting salaries cluster at two peaks, the midpoint sits between the peaks, not at either of them. That is why the salary curve belongs next to any average you read.
- Equity partners and solos are missing. OEWS covers wage-and-salary lawyers and excludes the self-employed, so equity partners' and solo practitioners' income is outside it by design — and the associate survey, as its name says, covers associates. Neither public dataset reaches equity-partner or solo-practitioner income.
- The top of an OEWS table is flagged. BLS footnotes lawyer wage values of $239,200 and above; the 90th percentile BLS's data returns, about $351,600, sits past that line, so treat the very top of the distribution as approximate.
- The scale is announcement, not audit. Its figures arrive through firm memos reported by legal press, and matching has not been uniform: per the press scorecards, Katten's scale topped out at $440,000 while Susman Godfrey set $240,000 for first-years.
The recruiting-firm and consulting reports named earlier carry a different problem: without their methodology in hand — who was surveyed, when, and on what response rate — a headline number from one cannot be verified from the outside.
Treat those figures the way you would treat any number you cannot trace, and take questions to the publisher.
Before you quote a number, check its date and its publisher
Using surveys in negotiation
A survey number earns its place in a negotiation by matching the employer in front of you.
The pairings that work:
- A large firm on the market scale — at a firm paying the scale, the grid itself sets base pay by class year, so NALP's large-firm figure ($215,000 median at firms of more than 700 lawyers, as of January 1, 2025) is orientation rather than leverage.
- A small or mid-size firm — the same survey's small-firm end: at firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, the most common first-year salary was $150,000 or less, reported by 44% of offices. Quoting a large-firm median at a small firm misprices both sides of the conversation.
- Government — OEWS sector medians: $178,380 in the federal executive branch, $131,350 in local government and $115,330 in state government (the state and local series exclude schools and hospitals).
- In-house — the corporate-head-office median of $223,560, the closest BLS proxy for in-house pay. It is a proxy: the category covers head-office lawyers of every kind, not only legal departments.
Two habits keep any of these figures honest at the table.
Attach the reference date every time — "as of January 1, 2025" is part of the number, not a footnote.
And quote medians rather than means: for its graduate salary curve, NALP puts the unadjusted mean's overstatement of the true average starting salary at an estimated 5.5%, and in a two-peak market the median is the sturdier center.
What the surveys cannot do is run the conversation — sequencing, scripts, and what to ask for when base will not move belong to the negotiation itself.
Our guide to negotiating salary picks up where the data ends.
Career information, not legal or financial advice. Every figure above carries its source's date — NALP's 2025 survey (as of January 1, 2025), the BLS OEWS May 2025 release, and the market scale as reported by legal press through early October 2026 — so confirm the current release with the publisher named before you rely on any number.