How much do lawyers make right out of law school?
The honest answer is a curve with two peaks, not a bell.
In NALP's Class of 2025 data, 50.0% of reported full-time starting salaries fell between $60,000 and $100,000, while 21.5% sat at exactly $225,000.
The sections below break the curve apart: which employers pay which peak, and what happens to pay after year one.
Median starting salary and why it misleads
The distribution NALP publishes for the Class of 2025 is bimodal — two humps rather than a bell.
Salaries of $60,000 to $100,000 made up 50.0% of the 22,715 reported full-time starting salaries.
The second peak is also a single number: $225,000 accounted for 21.5% of reported salaries.
Both peaks are real, and they describe different jobs.
The curve covers every full-time job lasting a year or more — law firms of every size, government and public interest alike — not just large-firm offers.
This is why single "average starting salary" headlines mislead.
NALP's Class of 2025 national median starting salary was $100,000, but one midpoint of a two-peak curve hides both peaks.
NALP itself says the unadjusted mean overstates the true average starting salary by an estimated 5.5%, because large-firm salaries are more completely reported than others.
Two other numbers you will see quoted come from different series, and they do not measure the same thing.
NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey — 437 law offices, 87% of them at firms of 250 or more lawyers — found a median first-year associate base salary of $200,000 as of January 1, 2025.
The federal OEWS series for May 2025 puts the median annual wage for all lawyers (SOC 23-1011) at $159,670 across 754,500 wage-and-salary jobs, a count that excludes the self-employed.
Different samples answer differently; neither number is wrong, they just describe different populations.
The occupation-wide table behind the federal figure — medians, percentiles and a state-by-state table — lives on our lawyer salary data page.
The rest of this page stays on first-job pay: which employers pay which peak, and what happens to pay after year one.
Starting pay by employer type
Large firms that pay "market rate" are the top peak.
As reported in legal press, Milbank's June 2, 2026 memo set a new associate base scale effective July 1, 2026, and it starts at $235,000 for the Classes of 2026 and 2025.
That is a correction worth making explicit: the $225,000 figure still quoted in older articles was the first-year step of the previous schedule, not the current one.
NALP's 2025 survey, reporting salaries as of January 1, 2025, shows how concentrated the top was before the raise. $225,000 was the single most common first-year salary, but only 32% of offices reported offering it.
At firms of more than 700 lawyers the figure was 45% of offices, and the median first-year base at those 700-plus-lawyer firms was $215,000.
The class-year schedule behind the market base — who pays what now — is explained on our first-year BigLaw salary page.
The rest of the associate survey describes the left peak.
At firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, the most common first-year salary was $150,000 or less, reported by 44% of offices.
Two caveats travel with that number: the survey's sample is large-firm-heavy, and our research found no sourced base scales for secondary markets or quotable bonus formulas for small firms — an offer from a two-lawyer firm is not a figure the survey sample represents well.
NALP's Class of 2025 graduate findings — a different series, covering reported starting salaries rather than offices — fill in the small end.
The private-practice median starting salary was $155,000, and medians by firm size ranged from $84,000 at firms of 1–10 lawyers to $225,000 at firms of more than 500 lawyers.
Survey medians vs announced scales
Government and public-interest starting pay
Government and public-interest employers sit on the left peak.
NALP's Class of 2025 findings put the median starting salary at $81,000 in government and $75,000 in public interest, against $100,000 in business and $155,000 in private practice — all from the same graduate series.
The federal series adds a different view: lawyers of every experience level, by sector.
In BLS's May 2025 OEWS, the median annual wage for lawyers (SOC 23-1011) was $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.
Those are medians across whole workforces — every experience level mixed together — so read them as sector backdrop rather than offer sheets for this year's graduates.
Public-interest compensation also runs through loan forgiveness, not just the paycheck.
Under the federal PSLF program, per Studentaid.gov, eligibility depends on the employer rather than the job: 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 the equivalent of 120 qualifying monthly payments.
A lower headline salary in a government or nonprofit role is therefore not the whole financial picture — how Public Service Loan Forgiveness works for lawyers is its own page here.
Clerkship pay and later bonuses
A judicial clerkship is the other well-known first job, and it pays on its own scale.
NALP's Class of 2025 median starting salary for judicial clerkships was $72,533.
BLS's May 2025 OEWS series for Judicial Law Clerks (SOC 23-1012 — judicial clerks only, not every posting titled "law clerk") covers clerks of every experience level and shows a median annual wage of $64,920, with a 10th percentile of $46,180 and a 90th percentile of $113,140.
The money that follows the clerkship is part of the math too.
In NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey, 73% of law offices offered judicial clerkship bonuses, with amounts varying by clerkship type — a bonus category that exists specifically for the clerkship years.
Bonuses then continue annually at market firms, on their own calendar from base pay.
As reported by the ABA Journal, Cravath's November 2025 memo set year-end bonuses of $15,000 to $115,000 by class year, plus special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000 — totals of $21,000 to $140,000 on top of base.
The 2026 year-end amounts had not been announced as of October 2, 2026, in the sources we read; the current numbers live in firm memos, not in last year's articles.
How location changes starting pay
Location moves the medians.
In NALP's 2025 survey, six of its 19 major-market cities showed a median first-year associate salary of $225,000: Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and the Washington, DC area.
The list includes Texas cities, so top-of-survey pay is not only a coastal story.
Outside those 19 cities, the same survey put median first-year salaries at $181,900 in the West, $170,000 in the Northeast, and $160,000 in the South and Midwest.
Same year, same series — and the six-city median sits above every regional median outside the major markets.
Read them with the survey's limits attached: these are medians of reported salaries in a large-firm-heavy sample, reported as of January 1, 2025 — before the July 1, 2026 raise reported above moved the market base.
For pay at the state level across the whole profession, the federal series is the reference, and its state table sits on our lawyer salary data page.
How fast pay rises after year one
At firms on the market scale, base pay is set by class year.
Per the Milbank memo as reported, the scale steps from $235,000 (Classes of 2026/2025) to $245,000 (Class of 2024), $270,000 (2023), $320,000 (2022), $385,000 (2021), $410,000 (2020), $440,000 (2019) and $455,000 (2018).
Per the same memo, the 2026 raise added $10,000 for the first four class years and $20,000 for fifth- through eighth-years.
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 as reported in a legal-press associate compensation scorecard.
Bonuses add a second, hours-linked layer: 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.
Off the market scale, the sources we read turned up no published ladder — no secondary-market base scales and no quotable small-firm bonus formulas — so we have no off-scale progression figures to report.
However your first job pays, every figure on this page carries its date for a reason: firm memos move, surveys lag them, and federal statistics describe the whole profession.
Confirm the current number with the source that owns it — the firm's memo, NALP's releases or BLS — before you compare an offer against it.
Career information, not legal advice. Figures are as of the dates named — NALP's 2025 surveys, firm memos as reported in legal press through October 2, 2026, and BLS OEWS May 2025.