The data this page draws on includes no federal-only judicial clerkship salary; the nearest public figure in it is BLS's judicial law clerk occupation (SOC 23-1012), which is not a federal series: a national median of $64,920 a year in May 2025 — $46,180 at the 10th percentile, $113,140 at the 90th.
The financial upside of a clerkship does not stop at the court's payroll: 73% of law offices in NALP's 2025 survey offered judicial clerkship bonuses.
Below: federal pay, state pay, firm bonuses, class-year credit and PSLF.
Federal law clerk pay grades
The federal numbers start with an honest limitation: the public data this page draws on does not publish a federal-only law clerk wage.
BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) tracks judicial law clerks as one occupation — SOC 23-1012 — rather than a federal clerk series, and the federal judiciary's current clerk pay tables did not surface in the research behind this page.
What the occupation series shows for May 2025: a national median annual wage of $64,920 — $31.21 an hour.
The 10th percentile was $46,180 and the 90th percentile $113,140, a range rather than a set scale.
BLS counted 13,290 employed judicial law clerks in the release; the estimate excludes self-employed workers.
So where does a federal clerk find the actual number?
Federal clerkship and staff attorney positions are posted and applied to through OSCAR, the federal judiciary's online system, and the court's own announcement is the authoritative place to confirm what a specific position pays.
This page quotes no federal pay-grade figure because the research behind it found no current one to quote.
May 2025 data — courts re-set pay
State court clerkship pay
State court clerkship pay is a state-by-state picture: BLS's May 2025 release publishes state tables for the same judicial law clerk occupation, and the state-by-state medians and percentiles live on our law clerk salary page.
For a sector-wide starting number, NALP's Class of 2025 selected findings put the median starting salary for judicial clerkships at $72,533 — one figure for clerkships as a single sector.
The release we read does not split out a state-clerkships-only median, so a state-specific starting salary is not something we can source.
One reading caution: $72,533 and the BLS median above are different series, not a before-and-after.
The NALP figure is the starting salary new graduates reported for clerkship jobs in the Class of 2025; the BLS figure is a wage series covering judicial law clerks on the job in May 2025.
Name the series before comparing either to anything else.
The state tables have gaps, too.
In the BLS API data behind this page, the May 2025 release published no judicial law clerk estimates for 12 jurisdictions — including Illinois, North Carolina and DC.
Where a state is missing from the salary hub, listed as not published by BLS, that is the reason: OEWS published no estimate there in that release, and we do not fill gaps by estimation.
Clerkship bonuses at law firms
A clerkship bonus is the firm's side of the ledger: money a law office offers tied to a judicial clerkship — not part of the court's pay, and not universal.
NALP's survey found 73% of law offices offering one, not all.
That figure comes from NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey, in which 73% of law offices offered judicial clerkship bonuses.
NALP's summary adds the expectation-setting detail: bonus amounts varied by type of clerkship.
Beyond that variation, the public record is thin: the research for this page found no primary source quoting standard clerkship bonus dollar amounts, and this page will not invent one.
The number that governs is the one in a firm's recruiting materials and offer letter — which is exactly where to ask the question before you accept.
Class-year credit
Class-year credit is how a firm counts clerkship time against its associate classes — the entering cohorts that sit together on the firm's pay scale.
As BLS describes them, judicial clerkships are typically 1- or 2-year terms, taken by some graduates before working as a lawyer — so the question a returning clerk faces is whether those years count as associate years.
There is no published standard to point to: the research for this page found no sourced schedule for how much class-year credit a clerkship earns.
Treat credit as a question to ask in the same breath as the bonus — the two together decide what the clerkship is worth at that firm.
Once credit is set, it decides where the returning clerk sits on the class-year pay system — the per-class base scale.
Our guide to class-year pay covers how that scale is structured.
Loan forgiveness and PSLF for clerks
For clerks carrying law-school debt, the federal program that matters most is Public Service Loan Forgiveness — and its test is about the employer, not the job.
Per StudentAid.gov, PSLF forgives the remaining Direct Loan balance after the equivalent of 120 qualifying monthly payments made while working full time for a qualifying employer.
Qualifying employers are U.S. government organizations at any level and 501(c)(3) nonprofits; private law firms do not qualify.
A judicial clerkship sits on the qualifying side of that line — courts are government employers.
The reverse matters just as much: a move to a private firm after the clerkship is a move to a non-qualifying employer, and payments made there do not advance the count toward 120.
Full time, for PSLF's purposes, means a weekly average of at least 30 hours with qualifying employer(s).
Two current details from StudentAid.gov: the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) is listed as a PSLF-qualifying plan, and there are special payment rules for borrowers with any loan disbursed on or after July 1, 2026.
Both matter when a clerk maps payments against the 120-payment count.
Career information, not legal advice. Clerk pay figures here are the BLS OEWS May 2025 release and NALP's Class of 2025 report as named above; confirm current pay with the court, and loan forgiveness questions with StudentAid.gov.
PSLF rules move — check StudentAid.gov