How much should a law firm pay a bankruptcy attorney?

Begin with what the data can and cannot tell you: our research found no salary series that isolates bankruptcy pay.

BLS's OEWS program counts the entire lawyer occupation under one code (SOC 23-1011), across all industries, and excludes self-employed lawyers entirely — so every number below is an all-lawyers proxy you calibrate against your own market, not a bankruptcy figure.

Within that proxy, the May 2025 release put the median annual wage for lawyers at $159,670 nationally, with the middle half of wage-and-salary lawyers between $102,990 and $221,370 and a 10th percentile of $78,360, across 754,500 employed lawyers.

The 90th percentile, $351,600, sits above the $239,200 line where BLS footnotes its published wage values — read it as a marker of how high the top decile runs rather than a precise ceiling.

The industry cut closest to your world is the legal services series: lawyers in legal services (NAICS 5411 — law firms) had a median annual wage of $157,870 in May 2025.

That figure still spans every experience level in the industry, so treat it as context for the firm market rather than a target for this seat.

Geography moves the number substantially.

Among states, BLS recorded the highest lawyer medians in New York ($207,860), DC ($195,190) and California ($195,080), and the lowest in Mississippi ($91,690).

The full state-by-state table lives on our bankruptcy attorney salary data page.

Postings are the layer that describes your competition this month — what firms your size, in your city, are actually offering for the seat.

The bankruptcy attorney jobs on this board are one place to read them, and note that above headcount thresholds in the states the offer section below names, the posting itself must carry a range by law — those are the ones our research verified.

Experience is priced by class year in the big-firm associate market.

The scale in force since July 1, 2026 runs from $235,000 for the Classes of 2025 and 2026 to $455,000 for the Class of 2018, set by a Milbank memo dated June 2, 2026; the legal-press scorecard our figures rest on — a secondary source, marked unverified in our notes — records McDermott, Quinn Emanuel, Sullivan & Cromwell, Katten, Norton Rose Fulbright and Troutman Pepper Locke among the firms that matched by late summer 2026.

If your shortlist includes restructuring laterals, know where your offer sits against that ladder before the call.

Practice area: our research found no published price list.

No source we read splits lawyer pay by practice area, so a number a candidate quotes for bankruptcy work specifically is a claim to test in your market, not a figure to look up.

What the record does show is the size of the two markets this seat can serve: in the 12 months ending June 30, 2026, U.S. courts received 608,511 bankruptcy filings, and consumer chapters dwarfed Chapter 11 restructurings — 382,161 Chapter 7 and 215,490 Chapter 13 cases against 10,320 Chapter 11s.

A consumer volume practice and a commercial restructuring group are hiring for different workloads.

Our research also found no premium figure for bankruptcy experience itself: if the seat needs a lawyer who can run volume files with minimal supervision, price that against what the throughput is worth to your docket, and verify the record — filings prepared, chapter mix, creditor meetings handled — rather than quoting an industry number.

Firm size is the axis the survey prices directly.

NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey put the median first-year base at $200,000 as of January 1, 2025 — $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers — in a sample that skews toward large firms.

At firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, a first-year salary of $150,000 or less was the most common response, reported by 44% of offices.

Outside NALP's 19 major-market cities, median first-year salaries ran $181,900 in the West, $170,000 in the Northeast and $160,000 in the South and Midwest; in six metros — Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and the Washington, DC area — the median first-year salary was $225,000.

The Class of 2025 salary curve NALP publishes is bimodal: salaries of $60,000–$100,000 made up 50.0% of the 22,715 reported full-time salaries, while $225,000 accounted for 21.5%.

NALP's curve covers all full-time jobs lasting a year or more — not just law firms — so read it as the shape of the market rather than a law-firm pay table: half the reported salaries sit at $60,000–$100,000, and the right peak sits at $225,000.

The seat you are hiring tells you which market you are pricing against.

Read the averages behind this curve carefully either way: NALP itself cautions that the unadjusted mean starting salary overstates the true average by about 5.5%, because large-firm salaries are more completely reported.

Classification comes first because it sets the floor.

Under the federal rule the Department of Labor enforces (29 CFR 541.304), an employee holding a valid license to practice law who is actually engaged in practice is an exempt professional, and the federal salary requirements do not apply — so under federal law, whether you pay your bankruptcy attorney a salary, an hourly rate or an amount per case is a market decision, not a compliance minimum.

State law can differ: California, for one, has no such carve-out — a practising lawyer there is exempt only if they also earn a monthly salary of at least two times the state minimum wage, $70,304 a year ($1,352 a week) at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90 an hour.

And the exemption follows the license and the practice: a law graduate awaiting bar results is not covered by it and must meet another exemption's salary and duties tests or be paid overtime — the federal standard salary level for the white-collar exemptions is $684 a week ($35,568 a year) as of October 2026.

The full map is in our guide to overtime rules.

Then price the volume honestly.

Filings are up — 608,511 cases in the 12 months ending June 30, 2026, a 12.2% rise — but your unit of revenue is the collected dollar, not the filed case.

Clio's 2025 Legal Trends Report, drawn from Clio users (mostly small firms), put average utilization at 38% — about 3 of 8 hours in a workday billable — realization at 88% (2.6 hours invoiced per 8-hour day) and collection at 93% (2.4 hours collected per day).

A per-case bonus computed on filings can outrun a salary your collections never recover; key any variable pay to a measure you can compute from your own books.

The per-case question has a legal edge, and the sourced rules attach to your nonlawyer staff, not to the associate.

ABA Model Rule 5.4(a) bars a lawyer or law firm from sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer, subject to four listed exceptions — and one of them, Rule 5.4(a)(3), lets a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan based in whole or in part on profit-sharing.

The New York State Bar Association's Ethics Opinion 887 drew the line: a bonus from a plan based on overall firm or department profitability is permissible, one based on referrals of particular matters is not — and New York's comment to the rule says profit-sharing with nonlawyer employees must rest on total profitability of the firm or a department, not the fee from a single case.

The D.C. Bar's Ethics Opinion 322 similarly concluded a firm may not pay a nonlawyer employee a percentage of the profits from designated cases.

Those opinions bind their own jurisdictions; your state's rules of professional conduct govern your firm — confirm any bonus structure with your state bar's ethics counsel.

One statutory line marks how you staff the volume itself.

Federal bankruptcy law (11 U.S.C.

110) defines a "bankruptcy petition preparer" as a person other than the debtor's attorney — or an employee of that attorney under the attorney's direct supervision — who prepares documents for filing, for compensation.

A paralegal working under your bankruptcy attorney sits outside that definition; a freelancer who prepares filings for debtors directly sits inside it, with the duties the statute attaches: signing each document, giving the debtor the official written notice that a preparer is not an attorney and may not practice law or give legal advice, and listing an identifying number on the filing.

Hiring the attorney is partly hiring that supervision layer for your staff — factor it into what the seat is worth to you.

No survey our research read ranks which benefits bankruptcy lawyers value most, so this section stays inside what the record documents rather than guessing at preferences.

The bonus structures that surround base pay are documented, and they set the context your offer competes in when the shortlist includes restructuring laterals.

The most recent completed year-end, as reported by the ABA Journal: Cravath's 2025 year-end bonuses ran $15,000 to $115,000 by class year, plus special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000, and the same reporting noted the $15,000-to-$115,000 scale had been unchanged since 2021.

Some firms key the bonus to hours — the same report says Cadwalader paid 120% of the year-end bonus to associates with at least 2,200 billable hours in 2025.

Per the legal-press scorecard, Milbank announced 2026 summer bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000 with no minimum-hours requirement, payable August 31, 2026, and Cahill matched on September 24, 2026.

As of our research date (October 2, 2026), the 2026 year-end amounts had not been announced.

Two documented levers can matter when you price this seat.

Judicial clerkship bonuses: 73% of law offices in NALP's 2025 survey offered them, with amounts varying by clerkship type — relevant when a candidate comes out of a bankruptcy chambers year.

And the loan-forgiveness asymmetry: Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the remaining Direct Loan balance after the equivalent of 120 qualifying monthly payments made while employed full time by a qualifying employer, and qualifying employers are U.S. government organizations and 501(c)(3) nonprofits — a private firm's years do not accrue credit.

A consumer-side candidate weighing a legal-aid or government job against your offer is weighing something your salary alone has to beat.

For the rest of the package — health coverage, retirement, flexibility — our guide to the benefits small firms offer works through what a small firm can actually fund.

One compliance note: three of the states whose posting rules our research verified also require the posting to describe benefits — Washington and Illinois require a general description of benefits in covered postings, and Minnesota requires the starting salary range plus a benefits description, with ranges that may not be open-ended.

Benchmark in layers and keep their scopes straight — the BLS all-lawyers proxy for your state, NALP's firm survey (dated January 1, 2025 and skewed toward large firms), and live postings from firms your size in your city.

Our guide to benchmarking law firm pay works through the mechanics; this section is about the rules around the number.

Start from what you may ask, because in the four states our research read in full, salary history is off the table.

California bars every employer — any size — from seeking an applicant's salary history, including benefits, orally or in writing, and from relying on it in deciding whether to hire or what to pay.

New York bars relying on an applicant's wage or salary history and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered or hired.

Illinois makes it unlawful to screen applicants by salary history or to request it as a condition of an interview or offer.

Massachusetts bars seeking it from the candidate or a current or former employer.

California also hands you the lawful anchor: you may ask what the candidate expects to earn in this position, and if they volunteer prior pay unprompted, you may consider it.

An applicant there can also demand the position's pay scale on reasonable request, whatever the employer's size — have the number ready before the first conversation.

Two of those states script what happens after a number is on the table.

In New York, you may confirm salary history only if, after a compensation offer is made, the candidate responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number; in Massachusetts, confirmation is allowed only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation has been made.

These are the four statutes our research read in full; other states and cities have salary-history rules we have not counted.

Building the conversation on what the candidate expects — the question California's statute expressly allows — draws on no salary history; confirm your state's current rule with your state labor agency or employment counsel.

The range you post is itself regulated.

California requires the pay scale in postings for employers with 15 or more employees and defines it as a good-faith estimate of what you reasonably expect to pay on hire, with penalties of $100 to $10,000 per violation; New York requires ranges at four or more employees, Washington and Illinois at 15 or more, Minnesota at 30 or more, and Massachusetts at 25 or more.

Where a range is required it is a term with teeth — set it before the first interview and keep the posted range consistent with the number you offer.

If the hire comes through a recruiter, price that too: our research found no primary source for recruiter fee percentages, so treat any quoted "standard" rate as a negotiating position and get the fee and guarantee terms in writing.

The sourcing and screening half of the process is in our guide to how to hire a bankruptcy attorney; this page picks up at the number.

Our research found no published review cadence for attorney pay, so anchor the review to the events that actually move the number:

• When the data ages. The BLS figures on this page are the May 2025 release — the latest at our research date — and NALP's survey figures are as of January 1, 2025. Re-pull your benchmarks when the next releases land instead of reusing these numbers indefinitely.
• When the market scale moves. The big-firm base scale sat at $225,000 to $435,000 until the raise that took effect July 1, 2026 — the first move since 2023, led by Milbank both times, per the legal-press scorecard. The move is public; expect candidates to ask where your firm stands when it happens again.
• When your case flow moves. Total U.S. bankruptcy filings rose 12.2% in the 12 months ending June 30, 2026. A volume practice's pay review is partly a throughput review — rerun your per-case math when the filing numbers and your own collections move.
• When wage floors move. California's exemption floor for practising lawyers is a multiple of the state minimum wage — $70,304 a year at the 2026 rate — and the federal standard salary level, $684 a week ($35,568 a year) as of October 2026, matters for any hire relying on another exemption, such as a graduate awaiting bar results. Both figures can change; check the current rates before you rely on them.
• When bonus season lands. The 2026 year-end amounts were unannounced as of October 2, 2026; whatever scale is announced resets the context for your own variable pay.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. Wage figures come from BLS's OEWS May 2025 release and NALP's published surveys as named; the overtime, salary-history, posting-range, fee-sharing and bankruptcy-preparer rules come from the federal regulations, state statutes, state bar ethics opinions and agency pages cited. They change — confirm your pay structure, classifications and offer terms with employment counsel, your state labor agency and your state bar's ethics counsel.