NALP surveys summer associate pay as a weekly salary: its 2025 Associate Salary Survey put the median for second-year summer associates at $3,850 a week across all firms, and $4,100 at firms of more than 700 lawyers.
At the top of the market, Milbank's scale-setting June 2026 memo, as reported in legal press, says its increase applies to current summer associates — while small-firm and public-interest summers are priced program by program.
How summer associate pay is calculated
NALP surveys summer associate pay as a weekly salary: the 2025 medians were $3,850 a week across all firms and $4,100 a week at firms of more than 700 lawyers, for second-year summer associates.
Where an offer quotes a weekly rate, your total for the summer is that rate times the number of weeks you work.
At Milbank, summer pay is tied to the first-year salary the firm's scale sets: its June 2, 2026 memo, as reported in legal press, set its $235,000 first-year rate effective July 1, 2026 and said the increase applies to current summer associates.
Divide $235,000 by 52 weeks and you get about $4,519 a week.
That division is our arithmetic from the published scale, not a figure from any memo we read.
NALP's published median covers second-year summer associates.
The release we read does not break out a separate weekly figure for 1L summers, so what a first-year summer pays is a question to put to each employer and each public-interest funding program.
A firm summer associate is also a different job from a judicial law clerk, and the pay is set on a different track.
The court-side numbers live on our law clerk salary page, drawn from federal wage data for judicial law clerks.
Market-rate weekly pay at big firms
At firms of more than 700 lawyers, NALP's 2025 median for second-year summer associates was $4,100 a week.
Read it with its date: the survey is a pre-raise snapshot, taken before Milbank's June 2, 2026 memo — effective July 1, 2026, as reported in legal press — lifted the first-year scale to $235,000.
At Milbank, whose memo says the rate applies to current summer associates, the pro-rated weekly figure rises with it.
The scale itself is a firm-memo phenomenon, and not every market firm matched on the same terms — Susman Godfrey set $240,000 for first-years, for one, as reported in legal press.
So the weekly rate in your offer letter, not the headline scale, is the figure to compare.
One naming trap: the "summer bonuses" in current law-firm headlines — Milbank's, for example — are not pay for summer associates.
They are mid-year special bonuses for associates, announced by class year: Milbank's 2026 special bonuses, announced July 27, 2026, ranged from $6,000 for the Class of 2026 to $25,000 for the Class of 2018 and above (and special counsel), with no minimum-hours requirement, as reported in legal press.
For summer associates themselves, the sourced figure is the weekly salary: our research surfaced no separate summer-associate bonus in NALP's 2025 summer figures.
Survey medians and press-reported memos, not promises
Small and mid-size firm summer pay
The all-firm median of $3,850 blends firm sizes, and it sits below the $4,100 median at firms of more than 700 lawyers.
NALP's public release we read does not split the weekly summer median into firm-size bands below that, so this page has no clean sourced weekly figure for small and mid-size firms.
The same survey's associate data sketches the base smaller firms build from: among firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, the most common first-year salary was $150,000 or less, reported by 44% of offices.
That is first-year associate pay, not a summer figure — keep the two measurements apart, and put the summer question to the firm itself.
Two questions make any smaller-firm summer offer comparable: whether the weekly rate is pro-rated from the firm's first-year scale or set as a flat weekly figure, and how many weeks the program runs.
Multiply the weekly rate by the weeks covered and you have the whole summer's pay — the number to set against a market offer.
Public-interest summer funding
Public-interest summers — legal aid organizations, government offices, nonprofits — are not paid from a firm's associate scale, so the figures above don't transfer.
Where the money comes from varies by program: law school public-interest grants, named fellowships and host-organization budgets are the routes to ask about.
Ask each program for its amount, its eligibility rules and its deadlines.
Our research surfaced no sourced dataset behind a "typical" public-interest summer stipend, so this page will not quote one.
Your law school's public-interest or career services office is the place to ask: which grants it administers, what they paid in recent summers, and when applications close.
When you weigh a funded public-interest summer against a firm summer, compare the whole package: the weekly rate or grant amount, the weeks each covers, and any travel or housing support.
A headline number from either side, on its own, doesn't make the comparison.
Taxes and stipends
The weekly figures on this page are gross pay, and what lands in your account is the net after withholding.
How much comes out depends on your total income for the year, the details on your withholding paperwork, and the state — and sometimes city — where the firm sits.
Plan from the net number, not the gross.
Housing stipends are the other moving part, and the honest answer is that our research did not surface a sourced dataset on summer housing stipends — so this page won't quote a typical amount.
Ask each program directly: whether housing or relocation support exists, whether it is paid on top of the weekly salary, and how it is treated at tax time.
Career information, not legal advice. The figures here are survey medians and press-reported firm memos with their as-of dates; pay is set employer by employer, so confirm the current number with the firm's memo, your offer letter, or the funding program itself.