Law clerk vs paralegal: these are two different jobs, not two names for one.
A paralegal is trained staff who performs "specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible" — the American Bar Association's 2020 definition.
A law clerk role is different: federal overtime rules exempt the licensed, practicing lawyer, leaving the law graduate awaiting bar results and the unlicensed law clerk to meet another exemption's tests or be paid overtime.
Training, tasks, pay and career paths differ.
Who each is: student or graduate vs trained staff
The paralegal is the defined role.
The ABA House of Delegates adopted the current definition at its February 2020 Midyear Meeting: "A paralegal is a person, qualified by education, training or work experience who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity and who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible."
That wording replaced the 1997 definition and dropped the term "legal assistant" — though usage varies, because NALA treats the two terms as synonymous while firms often use "legal assistant" for a secretarial role.
Training paths vary.
BLS lists the typical entry-level education as an associate's degree, and notes that some employers prefer a bachelor's degree, others consider a high school diploma plus experience, and some hire people with no legal education and train them on the job.
Certification is not required, but some employers prefer or require it, and a credential typically means passing an exam plus ongoing continuing education.
The role is large: BLS's employment projections count 404,900 paralegal and legal assistant jobs in 2025, and its OEWS wage survey, which excludes self-employed workers, counted 392,880 employed in May 2025.
The paralegals hub covers the role in full.
The law clerk title is defined less by a credential than by where its holder sits on the licensing path.
BLS counts judicial law clerks as their own occupation — SOC 23-1012, the court role, with 13,290 employed in May 2025.
And in federal pay rules, how the clerk is treated turns on licensure rather than the title: the practicing-lawyer exemption covers only license holders actually practicing, so the law graduate awaiting bar results and the unlicensed law clerk fall outside it.
The law clerk guide covers the firm, judicial and student versions of the title, and the summer associate guide covers the recruiting-focused student role.
For students weighing unpaid positions, DOL's Fact Sheet 71 says courts use a seven-factor "primary beneficiary test" to decide whether an intern at a for-profit employer is an employee owed minimum wage and overtime, with no single factor decisive — one factor is whether the intern's work complements rather than displaces paid employees' work while giving significant educational benefits.
Separately, DOL says unpaid internships with public-sector and nonprofit charitable organizations, where the intern volunteers without expecting pay, are generally permissible.
Tasks compared
The paralegal's task list is the one the research behind this page documents.
BLS lists the typical duties as:
- investigating case facts
- researching laws and regulations
- gathering and organizing documents
- drafting correspondence and documents such as contracts
- obtaining affidavits
- helping at trial with exhibits and notes
- filing documents with courts and agencies
- scheduling interviews, meetings and depositions
Scope varies with firm size: BLS notes that in small firms paralegals may work on all aspects of a case, while in larger firms they may work on one phase, such as preparing witnesses for deposition or trial.
BLS lists communication, detail orientation, interpersonal, organizational and research skills as the important qualities, and says most paralegals work full time in work that can be fast paced, with multiple projects under tight deadlines and occasional travel to depositions or trials.
The ethical frame around that list is delegation.
NALA's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Canon 3, allows a paralegal to perform any task properly delegated and supervised by an attorney, with the attorney staying responsible to the client and taking professional responsibility for the work product.
Canon 1 draws the outer line — no unauthorized practice of law, no establishing attorney-client relationships, no setting fees, no giving legal opinions or advice, and no representing a client before a court or agency unless authorized — and Canon 5 requires disclosing paralegal status at the outset of any professional relationship.
There is no comparable sourced task list for law clerks in the research behind this page: the federal sources document the title's licensing status and pay treatment, not its day-to-day work.
The structural contrast is what the record supports — the paralegal role is defined by attorney delegation, while the clerk role's treatment in the federal pay rules turns on licensure — working outside the exemption written for practicing lawyers.
For task-level detail, use the law clerk guide rather than this comparison.
Pay compared
Each BLS series has a national wage figure, and both come from the same release — BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) for May 2025 — so the medians can sit side by side:
| Role (BLS series) | National median, May 2025 | 10th–90th percentile | Employment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Judicial law clerks (SOC 23-1012) | $64,920 a year ($31.21 an hour) | $46,180 – $113,140 | 13,290 |
| Paralegals and legal assistants (SOC 23-2011) | $62,890 a year ($30.24 an hour) | $44,740 – $101,500 | 392,880 |
Read each series' scope before reading anything into the gap.
The law clerk series is judicial law clerks — the SOC title covers the court role — so the data we read give no matching federal wage series for a firm or corporate law clerk.
The paralegal series folds legal assistants in with paralegals, so OEWS cannot show whether paralegals out-earn legal assistants, and it excludes self-employed workers entirely.
Where the job sits matters too: BLS put the paralegal and legal assistant median at $81,470 in the federal government against $61,770 in legal services.
The pay structure differs as well as the level.
DOL regulations say paralegals and legal assistants generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals, because an advanced specialized degree is not a standard prerequisite for the field — with an exception for a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job.
An unlicensed law clerk is not exempt under the practicing-lawyer provision either, and must meet another exemption's salary and duties tests or be paid overtime.
Once someone holds a valid license and is actually practicing, that changes: the same regulation then exempts the lawyer, and the salary requirements do not apply.
Exemption is fact-specific, not title-specific
Which role leads where
For the law clerk, licensure and practice are the hinge.
The rule that leaves the unlicensed clerk meeting another exemption's tests exempts a person who holds a valid license and is actually engaged in practice, with no salary requirement — so the federal overtime treatment can change once a clerk is licensed and practicing law.
The judicial version of the role is also priced into firm hiring: in NALP's 2025 associate salary survey, 73% of law offices offered judicial clerkship bonuses, with amounts varying by clerkship type.
What the job is like, and how courts hire for it, is the judicial clerkship guide's territory.
For the paralegal, the work sits mostly in firms: 75% of paralegal and legal assistant jobs were in legal services in 2025, per BLS, with local government at 5%, the federal government at 4%, and state government and finance and insurance at 3% each.
The occupation is projected to hold steady — BLS projects little or no change, from 404,900 jobs in 2025 to 403,800 in 2035, with 40,800 openings a year on average, mostly to replace workers who change occupations or leave the labor force.
For the move from the staff side to the licensed side, a separate guide covers going from paralegal to lawyer.
Neither record documents a promotion ladder — the bonus share and the projections are what they measure: one path tied to licensure and, in its judicial form, to a bonus line in firm pay surveys; the other a large, steady occupation centered in legal services.
Where to find law clerk jobs
Open positions are collected on our law clerk jobs page, which lists law clerk roles as employers post them.
If you land on the staff side of this comparison instead, the paralegals hub is the starting point, and open paralegal roles sit on their own paralegal jobs page.
Career information, not legal advice. The overtime rules described here are the U.S. Department of Labor's regulations, the wage figures are BLS's OEWS May 2025 release, and the ethics canons are NALA's code — confirm how any of them applies to a specific job with the DOL's Wage and Hour Division or your state labor agency.