Generally, yes — paralegals and legal assistants are overtime-eligible employees.
The Department of Labor's regulations say they "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).
Exemption is decided by duties and salary, never by the job title alone, and the exceptions that do exist are narrow.
This page walks through the tests, the exceptions and the state overlays.
The short answer
Paralegals and legal assistants are generally non-exempt employees under federal wage-and-hour law — the Fair Labor Standards Act, whose overtime rules the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) administers.
The DOL's regulations address the occupation directly: "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).
Exempt and non-exempt are the two sides of that rule.
An exempt employee falls outside the FLSA's overtime requirements; a non-exempt employee is covered by them.
Because the regulations generally do not treat paralegal work as exempt professional work, the overtime rules are the default — and the exceptions run through specific tests, not through a job title or a pay stub.
- Duties and salary decide. The DOL is explicit: "Job titles do not determine exemption status." A "senior paralegal" or "paralegal manager" title does not exempt anyone on its own.
- The exceptions are narrow. The two routes this page's sources recognize are an advanced degree in another field used on the job and the highly compensated employee test, and each carries its own conditions.
- States add a layer. California, New York, Washington and Colorado each set exempt salary thresholds alongside the federal level — the table in the state-rules section below has the 2026 numbers.
New to the role itself?
The paralegal career guide covers what paralegals do, where they work and how people enter the field — this page stays on the overtime question.
Why paralegals usually aren't exempt
The learned professional exemption is where lawyers and paralegals part ways.
DOL Fact Sheet #17D lists law among the fields of science or learning whose employees can qualify as exempt professionals.
Under 29 CFR 541.304, a lawyer who holds a valid license and is actually engaged in the practice of law is an exempt professional — and the federal salary-level and salary-basis requirements do not apply to that lawyer.
Federal law, in other words, imposes no salary test on a practising lawyer.
Paralegals get their own paragraph in the same regulations, and it points the other way.
The rules say 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.
The analysis asks what entry to the field requires, not what any individual paralegal has accomplished, which is why a strong resume does not move it.
The title on the door does not change the analysis either.
The DOL states that job titles do not determine exemption status — the duties and the salary have to meet the regulations.
A firm can call a seat "senior paralegal," "paralegal manager" or "practice administrator," and the exemption question is still decided by what the person actually does and actually earns.
About that DOL opinion letter you may have seen cited
Exceptions
This page's sources recognize two narrow routes that can put a paralegal on the exempt side of the line, and neither runs through the paralegal title.
The advanced-degree exception.
The learned professional exemption can apply to a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job.
The regulation's own example: a law firm hires an engineer as a paralegal to advise on product liability cases or assist on patent matters, and "that engineer would qualify for exemption."
Even then, fitting the duties side of a test is not the whole analysis — the salary requirements still have to be met.
The highly compensated employee (HCE) test.
The federal HCE threshold is total annual compensation of at least $107,432, including at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis.
The compensation line is not the whole test either: the HCE route also requires that the employee customarily and regularly performs at least one exempt duty.
A high salary alone does not exempt a paralegal.
A credential that sits outside both routes: the paralegal certificate.
It is an education credential — the paralegal certificate page covers what it is and what it costs — not an exemption factor.
The learned-professional analysis for paralegals asks whether the field requires an advanced specialized academic degree, not whether a worker holds a certificate, and exemption always comes back to duties and salary.
Salaried but non-exempt
A salary does not settle the question.
Because exemption turns on duties and salary together, a paralegal can be paid a fixed salary and still be non-exempt — the pay method is not the status.
The tests ask whether the duties fit an exemption and whether the pay meets the salary rules; a salaried paralegal whose duties do not fit stays covered by the overtime rules.
The salary side has a federal floor.
The standard salary level for the white-collar exemptions — executive, administrative and professional — is $684 per week, equivalent to $35,568 a year, as enforced by the DOL as of October 2026.
That is the level the exemptions generally require; the practising-lawyer exemption is the exception that does not carry it.
One correction worth making, because older blog posts still circulate the other numbers: the figures from a 2024 federal rule — $844 per week, $1,128 per week, $58,656 a year and $151,164 — are not in force.
The enforced federal standard is $684 per week as of October 2026.
Hourly versus salary, then, is a pay-method question, and the pay method follows the seat.
How firms structure paralegal pay from entry level through management is its own topic — the paralegal pay by level guide covers the ladder and what the federal wage data can and cannot see in it.
Comp time at private firms
Comp time is paid time off offered in place of overtime pay.
For a paralegal covered by the overtime rules, the natural question is whether a private law firm may substitute time off for the overtime pay those rules require.
The honest limit of this page: the DOL materials it cites cover the exemption tests, and our research for this page did not surface a primary source that settles how comp-time arrangements work at private employers.
This page will not restate a rule it cannot cite.
What is verifiable is who administers the question — the FLSA's overtime rules belong to the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, and states can run their own wage-and-hour layer on top of federal law.
That is where a comp-time question gets answered: with the agency, against the actual arrangement.
Before you agree to time off instead of overtime pay
State overtime rules
States can layer their own exempt salary thresholds on top of the federal level.
The four below are the states our research checked.
Each figure is the 2026 level; the California and Washington dollar amounts are our arithmetic from the minimum-wage multiple each state sets.
| Jurisdiction | 2026 exempt salary threshold | What the threshold covers |
|---|---|---|
| Federal (DOL) | $684 per week ($35,568 a year) | The standard level for the executive, administrative and professional exemptions |
| California | $70,304 a year ($1,352 a week) | All white-collar exemptions: a monthly salary of at least two times the state minimum wage ($16.90 an hour in 2026). Unlike federal law, California has no duty-only exemption for practising lawyers |
| New York | $1,275.00 a week in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester; $1,199.10 a week in the rest of the state | Executive and administrative employees, from January 1, 2026 |
| Washington | $1,541.70 a week ($80,168.40 a year) | 2.25 times the 2026 minimum wage of $17.13 an hour, for all employers. Licensed lawyers actually practising law are exempt from the salary threshold |
| Colorado | $57,784 a year | Executive, administrative and professional employees (it was $56,485 in 2025). Doctors, lawyers and teachers can be exempt on duties alone; the state's highly-compensated-employee threshold is $130,014 |
Two things matter for paralegals reading the table.
First, a threshold is the salary leg of an exemption, not the whole test — the duties leg still has to be met, and federal rules say paralegals generally do not fit the learned-professional duties test.
Second, the duty-only carve-outs for practising lawyers — Washington and Colorado match the federal approach, while California has no carve-out at all — are written for licensed lawyers, not for paralegals.
New York's numbers carry one extra caveat: the published thresholds cover executive and administrative employees, and the state labor department page we read does not state a separate salary threshold for professional employees.
Confirm that piece with the New York State Department of Labor before relying on it.
Where your own pay sits against lines like these is a pay-data question.
The paralegal salary data page has the BLS wage figures for the occupation, nationally and by state.
Thresholds move — confirm the current number
If you think you're misclassified
A classification question is decided on the same two inputs this page has repeated: the duties actually performed and the salary actually paid.
The regulations work seat by seat, so the analysis starts with the job as it really operates — not the title, not the pay method, and not what comparable seats are called at other firms.
The fact that paralegals generally do not fit the learned-professional exemption is the starting point, and the two exceptions above are the only routes this page's sources recognize out of it.
Who runs the question: the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division administers the federal overtime and exemption rules, publishes the fact sheets and the salary levels cited on this page, and enforces the federal salary standard.
The state agencies in the table above administer their own thresholds, which is why the answer can differ by state even for identical work.
This page is career information, and it cannot assess anyone's specific job.
What it can do is narrow the question to the pieces the regulations actually read: what the seat does, what it pays, and which state it sits in.
Career information, not legal advice. Overtime and exemption rules come from the U.S. Department of Labor's regulations and from state wage-and-hour agencies — confirm the current rules with the DOL or the wage-and-hour agency for your state before relying on them.