No single published number answers the BigLaw paralegal salary question — none of the federal wage series our pay research read breaks the occupation out by firm size.
What the data does show is the occupation around it — a $62,890 median for paralegals and legal assistants in May 2025, inside a spread that reaches $101,500 at the 90th percentile — plus two levers that can sit on top of base pay: overtime and bonuses.
Here is what can, and cannot, be said about each.
Typical base pay at large firms
Start with the honest limit: none of the BLS wage series our pay research read breaks the paralegal occupation out by firm size, and the survey combines paralegals and legal assistants into one occupation (SOC 23-2011), so it cannot even show whether paralegals out-earn legal assistants — let alone isolate the biggest firms.
What the May 2025 release does publish is the occupation around the question.
Nationally, paralegals and legal assistants earned a median of $62,890 ($30.24 an hour), inside a 10th-to-90th percentile spread of $44,740 to $101,500 — percentiles of the occupation, not an entry-level salary and a top-of-ladder one.
Within the Legal Services industry (NAICS 5411, the law-firm industry), the median was $61,770.
The sector cuts around it give the shape without isolating BigLaw: paralegals and legal assistants in corporate head offices (Management of Companies and Enterprises) had a median of $94,570, and in the federal executive branch $81,470.
Those are context cuts, not a large-law-firm series — none of them is a BigLaw figure.
Geography moves the median too.
Among states, the District of Columbia had the highest median at $89,750, followed by Washington at $79,400 and Colorado at $78,190, with Mississippi lowest at $46,180.
The series stops at the state line — it cannot separate a large firm's paralegals from any other paralegal in that state.
A like-for-like large-firm-versus-small-firm base comparison, then, is not something the published data supports.
The sources we read do not include a specific large firm's paralegal scale; the practical window into one firm's range is its own job postings.
For the occupation-level numbers behind this page, the paralegal salary data page has the full percentile tables, nationally and by state.
Overtime's effect on BigLaw paralegal pay
Overtime is the part of a large-firm paycheck that no base-salary figure captures, and it exists because of how the exemption rules read paralegal work.
The Department of Labor's regulation on the occupation says paralegals and legal assistants "generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals because an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for entry into the field" (29 CFR 541.301(e)(7)).
That "generally" is the regulation's own word, and it is load-bearing: the default reading puts the occupation on the non-exempt side of the line — the side the overtime rules cover.
Two limits keep this from being automatic.
First, the DOL decides exemption on duties and salary — job titles do not determine status, so a senior or manager title settles nothing.
Second, the routes out each carry their own test: the learned-professional exemption can reach a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job (the regulation's own example is an engineer hired as a paralegal on product-liability or patent matters), and the highly compensated employee test starts at total annual compensation of $107,432, including at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis — a line a well-paid large-firm paralegal can cross without changing status, because the HCE route still requires performing at least one exempt duty.
So what does overtime actually do to a BigLaw number?
The mechanism is documented — generally non-exempt status is what makes hours beyond the standard schedule a pay question at all.
The magnitude is not: our research found no sourced paralegal billable-hour target, no billing-rate benchmark and no staff bonus range, and no primary-source weekly-hours figure for paralegals — nothing in what we read puts a number on what overtime adds at a large firm.
Any dollar figure for BigLaw paralegal overtime you see quoted is not something the sources we read can confirm.
The rules themselves, and the state layers on top of them, belong to their own page: paralegal overtime covers the exemption tests, the federal salary level — $684 per week ($35,568 a year) as enforced by the DOL as of October 2026 — and the 2026 state thresholds.
Exemption is decided seat by seat
BigLaw paralegal bonuses
The bonus question gets the least usable data of the three.
Our research found no primary source documenting a bonus range for paralegals at large firms — the staff-pay research looked for exactly that, and staff bonus ranges were not found in primary sources.
A dollar figure attached to a BigLaw paralegal bonus, wherever you see one quoted, is not something the sources we read can confirm; a specific firm's own posting or offer letter is the check.
What the sources do document is the frame those bonus plans sit in.
The ABA's Model Rule 5.4(a) bars a lawyer or law firm from sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer, subject to listed exceptions.
One of those exceptions, Rule 5.4(a)(3), lets a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan even when the plan is based in whole or in part on profit-sharing.
The model rules bind no one by themselves — each state's adopted version is what actually governs — and a profit-sharing plan is not permission to tie a staff member's pay to a specific case fee, which raises separate state ethics questions.
The bonus numbers that do make headlines are attorney numbers.
For the 2025 year-end season, the ABA Journal reported Cravath's year-end bonuses ranged from $15,000 (Class of 2025, prorated) to $115,000 (Class of 2018), with special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000 on top — an associate bonus scale reported by legal press, not paralegal pay data.
As of our October 2026 research, 2026 year-end amounts had not been announced.
How many hours do BigLaw paralegals work?
The same gap repeats.
No primary source we read states an average weekly hours figure for paralegals, and no sourced billable-hour target for paralegals exists in our research either.
A sentence like "BigLaw paralegals work X hours a week" cannot be sourced, so this page will not build one.
Even the lawyer-side number everyone repeats is unsourced: our research found no single average BigLaw billable-hours figure from NALP or any other primary source.
What exists in print is firm-specific: legal press reported that the market-scale firms matching Milbank's 2026 raise commonly tie the scale to billable expectations of 1,900 or 2,000 hours — Above the Law's scorecard of the firms' memos lists Norton Rose Fulbright at 1,900 and McDermott and Quinn Emanuel at 2,000.
Those expectations describe the associates, not the paralegals supporting them.
Hours still belong on a pay page for one reason: with the occupation generally non-exempt, time worked is the input that connects a long week to the overtime rules.
That makes the practical follow-up for any offer a question for the firm itself — how the seat's hours are tracked, and how overtime above base is paid.
Getting hired at a large firm
None of the data gaps above change what the application itself looks like, so treat this part as craft rather than data.
Aim the resume at the seat rather than at legal support in general.
BLS's list of typical paralegal duties — investigating case facts, researching laws and regulations, gathering and organizing documents, drafting documents such as contracts, filing with courts and agencies — is a menu of specifics, and a resume that names the duties the posting stresses gives a recruiter something specific to place.
Interview the numbers as hard as the duties.
The gaps this page documents — no published firm-size series, no sourced paralegal bonus range — mean the figures you can actually check are the firm's own, so ask how the seat is paid: the base, how overtime is tracked and paid, and what a bonus there is actually based on.
Postings help before you ever apply.
In New York, businesses with four or more employees must list compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers (Labor Law 194-b), and California requires employers with 15 or more employees to include the pay scale in job postings (Labor Code 432.3(c)(3)).
California's statute defines that pay scale as a good-faith estimate of what the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire — an estimate, not a guaranteed number.
When you are ready to see what is open, the paralegal job board lists current openings at law firms.
Career information, not legal advice. The pay and exemption rules described here come from the U.S. Department of Labor's regulations and from state wage-and-hour agencies, and bonus-plan rules come from each state's adopted version of the ethics rules — confirm the current rules with the DOL, your state wage-and-hour agency or your state bar before relying on them.