You become a securities lawyer the way you become any attorney — a law degree, a state license and, usually, the bar exam — and then build a practice inside the field: transactional work on offerings and disclosure, regulatory counseling, or enforcement.
Our research found no separate securities license; the routes we can document are the profession's general ones.
Below: the work, who hires, and how lawyers break in.
What does a securities lawyer do?
A securities lawyer works on the rules that govern investments — the stocks, bonds and other instruments companies raise money with — and on the deals and disputes that grow out of them.
Three overlapping kinds of work sit under the label: transactional work on offerings and the documents that support them, regulatory and compliance counseling for companies and financial firms, and enforcement — responding to agency investigations or carrying them out.
It is one of the subject-matter fields the axes in our types of lawyers map produce, and one specialty inside our broader attorney careers coverage.
The government side of the field is the part our sources document most directly: the SEC's Division of Enforcement runs the agency's civil enforcement of the federal securities laws, including investigations of possible violations.
Enforcement, as the SEC describes it there, is civil work — the criminal side of financial misconduct is a different practice, covered in our white collar defense guide.
The three kinds of work feel different day to day.
In broad strokes, transactional and regulatory practice is drafting, diligence and advice aimed at keeping an offering or a client's conduct inside the rules; enforcement practice, on either the agency or the responding side, is investigations, negotiation and, when a matter is filed, litigation and settlement.
The transactional-versus-litigation temperament split runs through the field the same way it does across the profession.
Who hires securities lawyers?
Start with the honest limitation: the federal data that counts lawyers treats them as one occupation and does not break employment out by practice area, so no securities-specific employer count exists in the data we publish from.
What BLS does publish is the employer mix for lawyers overall in 2025: legal services 52%, self-employed lawyers 11%, local government 8%, state government 7% and the federal government 5%.
Law firms.
Private practice is where the entry market concentrates: per NALP, 60.9% of employed Class of 2025 graduates took private-practice jobs, the highest share since the Class of 1990 — more than half of that class's employed graduates.
Firms of more than 500 lawyers are the single largest employer of new law graduates, taking more than one in five employed Class of 2025 graduates; add firms of 251–500 lawyers and about one in four starts in BigLaw.
Government.
The SEC is the federal employer this page can name directly: its Division of Enforcement carries the agency's civil enforcement of the federal securities laws, investigations included.
Federal attorney jobs are classified in the GS-0905 General Attorney series — work that includes trial matters, legal advice to an agency and drafting regulations — and sit in the excepted service under Schedule A (5 CFR 213.3102(d)), so agencies fill attorney positions directly rather than through competitive-service examining.
BLS counts general counsel among the titles government lawyers hold, alongside prosecutor and public defender.
In-house.
Companies employ lawyers directly too.
In NALP's Class of 2024 data, in-house lawyer was the most common job type in the business sector at 22.6% of business jobs — though only 32.6% of business-sector jobs required bar admission, and 47.0% were JD-advantage roles.
Nonprofits and public interest.
NALP counted public interest employers at 9.0% of Class of 2025 jobs — part of the 31.0% that went to public service overall, alongside government (12.0%) and judicial clerkships (10.0%).
That sector count does not isolate securities-related nonprofit roles, and our research found no source that does.
What background and courses help?
The gate is the profession's, not the specialty's.
BLS describes the typical entry-level education for lawyers as a doctoral or professional degree, and lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license — which usually requires passing a bar examination.
The full sequence, college to first legal job, is in our how to become a lawyer guide.
The practice-specific entry gate BLS names is not this field's: patent lawyers typically need a science or engineering background and must pass a USPTO-administered exam.
For securities work, our research found no separate credential or license alongside the general lawyer baseline.
What helps after that is judgment rather than a published checklist.
Electives that track the subject matter — corporate law, securities-specific courses where your school offers them, and anything that builds comfort reading financial statements and deal documents — are the obvious places to start.
Clinics, journal and moot court build the general record; check your school's catalog for what it actually offers instead of assuming a fixed list exists.
If the specialty itself is still an open question, the decision framework in our choosing a practice area guide walks the forks — litigation or transactional, people-facing or business-facing clients, pay model — and this field spans them: offering work is transactional and business-facing, enforcement work is disputes work.
Licensing is set jurisdiction by jurisdiction
How do lawyers break into securities law?
No securities-specific entry pipeline shows up in our sources — what they document is how lawyers enter practice generally.
Treat the routes below as documented mechanics, not a measurement of securities hiring itself.
The firm summer pipeline.
BLS notes a successful summer job or internship during law school may result in an employment offer after graduation.
That makes school-year summers the cheapest audition you get.
Clinics, journal and internships — with firms, in-house legal departments or government agencies — build the rest of the record.
A clerkship first.
Judicial clerkships are typically 1- or 2-year terms some graduates take before working as a lawyer.
NALP counted judicial clerkships at 10.0% of Class of 2025 jobs.
Direct agency hiring.
Because federal attorney positions sit in the excepted service (5 CFR 213.3102(d)), agencies hire attorneys directly rather than through a competitive exam.
Entry programs differ across agencies, and for the SEC specifically our research did not verify a named entry-level program — check the agency's own careers pages for what is open now.
Moving over mid-career.
A lawyer already doing corporate, regulatory or compliance work can move into securities through ordinary firm and in-house hiring; our sources document no separate gate for the move, and no count of how often it happens.
Geography.
65.6% of employed Class of 2025 graduates worked in the same state where they attended law school — nearly two-thirds — so where you study doubles as where the first job most often lands.
Job market and demand
There is no securities-specific line in the federal data: BLS treats lawyers as a single occupation — SOC 23-1011 — and does not break employment out by practice area, so no headcount or projection exists for this specialty in the data we publish from.
The profession-wide numbers are the honest benchmark: about 863,700 lawyer jobs in 2025.
The outlook is steady rather than spectacular.
BLS projects 5% employment growth for lawyers from 2025 to 2035 — faster than the average for all occupations — with about 28,700 openings a year on average over the decade, many from replacing workers who retire or change occupations.
BLS expects some routine legal work to be automated but does not expect that to reduce overall demand for lawyers.
On pay, the only clean series in our data is profession-wide: BLS put the median annual wage for lawyers at $159,670 in May 2025 — a figure that excludes self-employed lawyers and owners or partners of unincorporated businesses, so it does not describe partner or solo income.
A securities-specific premium is not in the data we reviewed.
One demand note for the government route: NALP counted about 690 new graduates hired by the federal government (excluding clerkships) in the Class of 2025, down 37% from nearly 1,100 the class before.
Whether securities work specifically is growing or shrinking, our data cannot say — the practice-area breakdown BLS does not publish is exactly the one this section would need.
Where to find attorney jobs
Two places to look, in order.
First, attorney jobs on LawFirmHires — the openings there are live rather than counted in this article, and firm, in-house and government roles all land on the same board.
Second, employers' own career pages: for the government route, agencies post openings directly, which is how the direct-hiring structure above works in practice.
Whichever route you take, the documented gate is the one BLS describes for lawyers: a law degree and a state license — which usually requires passing a bar examination.
The routes on this page are the ones our sources describe for lawyers generally; none of them measures entry into securities law on its own.
Career information, not legal advice. The pay and licensing figures here describe lawyers overall; confirm licensing requirements with the bar admission authority in your state.