How much should a law firm pay a bankruptcy paralegal?

Start with the honest label on the data.

The published federal data carries no bankruptcy-paralegal occupation: BLS does not even split paralegals from legal assistants — both sit in one occupation, Paralegals and Legal Assistants (SOC 23-2011) — so no federal series prices the bankruptcy specialty under its own name.

Every wage figure below is that broader occupation — a proxy for the seat you are budgeting, not a bankruptcy-paralegal census.

In the OEWS May 2025 release, that occupation paid a national median of $62,890 a year ($30.24 an hour), with a 10th percentile of $44,740 and a 90th percentile of $101,500, across 392,880 workers in all industries — a count that excludes the self-employed.

Narrowed to the legal services industry, the occupation paid a median of $61,770.

For a firm's budget, the legal-services line is the better anchor: it counts legal-industry employers rather than paralegals in every industry.

Read the percentile columns for what they are.

The $44,740-to-$101,500 spread describes an entire occupation across every industry, not a bankruptcy career ladder, so the 10th percentile is not entry-level pay for your seat.

Geography moves the number: in the same release, the District of Columbia had the highest paralegal and legal assistant median at $89,750, followed by Washington at $79,400 and Colorado at $78,190, while Mississippi was lowest at $46,180 — all-industry medians, not law-firm-only figures.

Pull the full state and percentile tables from our bankruptcy paralegal salary data page, and price your market from what is actually being offered — the live bankruptcy paralegal jobs on this board show the postings you are competing against.

Turning a median into a band for your market and the scope you are buying is its own exercise; our guide to benchmarking law firm pay walks it step by step.

Be skeptical of any table that claims to price a bankruptcy paralegal's experience directly.

The published data behind this page carries no experience split — the occupation cannot even be separated into paralegals and legal assistants, let alone a senior bankruptcy specialist from a first-year one — and our research found no primary source for a paralegal experience ladder, a specialty premium or a specialty pay ranking of any kind.

Treat vendor tables that promise one as marketing, and build your own ladder inside the band instead.

One number the research does give you is about the docket, not the wage: U.S. bankruptcy filings rose 12.2% to 608,511 in the 12 months ending June 30, 2026, with business filings up 16.9% to 26,941.

Filing volume is workload for this seat — petitions, schedules and deadlines moving through the office — and workload is hours, which for a seat budgeted hourly is an overtime line in your model, not a pay premium.

Price the volume you actually expect the hire to carry.

Price the scope the rest of the way.

Write down what the seat owns from day one: the document gathering and petition and schedule preparation it handles, the deadline calendar it supports, and how much attorney review each file gets before filing.

A seat that runs its caseload with little day-to-day direction is a different purchase from one that supports an attorney-led team, and the band should say so.

Fix the job before you price it.

The duties, the supervision setup and the credential checks are hiring decisions first — our guide to how to hire a bankruptcy paralegal covers them — and the band should price the job description you actually settle on, not a generic title.

On firm size: our research found no sourced firm-size pay curve for paralegals of any specialty, so there is no benchmark to cite for what a bigger or smaller firm should pay.

The wage is one line — payroll taxes, benefits and the tools the seat needs are others — so total the cost on your own books (salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, software and space).

Our research found no primary-source loaded-cost multiplier for law-firm staff either, so there is no honest shortcut number to apply.

Settle the base first, and settle it as a classification decision rather than a habit.

Under the federal regulation at 29 CFR 541.301(e)(7), paralegals and legal assistants generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals, because an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for the field.

The narrow exception: a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job can meet the learned-professional duties test.

And DOL guidance is explicit that job titles do not determine exemption status — the duties and salary the seat actually carries decide it.

Confirm each hire's classification with employment counsel before the first payroll runs.

Unless an exemption genuinely applies to the seat, budget the role as hourly and expect overtime on the filing crunch weeks.

The full analysis for firm staff, starting from the paralegal rule, is in our guide to overtime rules.

If you do claim an exemption for a paralegal with an advanced degree from another field, the federal salary floor for the executive, administrative and professional exemptions is $684 per week — $35,568 a year — the level DOL enforced as of October 2026.

A state threshold, where one applies, can sit well above it: California's white-collar exemptions require a salary of at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time work, $70,304 a year at the 2026 rate, and Washington's 2026 exempt threshold is $80,168.40 a year.

Volume work is where bankruptcy practice tempts firms toward per-filing pay, and two bodies of law draw the lines.

The first is the ethics rule on fee sharing.

ABA 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, 5.4(a)(3), lets a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan even though it is based in whole or in part on profit-sharing.

That is the design the exception names: a compensation or retirement plan for nonlawyer employees based in whole or in part on a profit-sharing arrangement — a bonus pool keyed to firm profitability fits that description.

A bounty for each petition filed, or a percentage of one case's fee, is not that design — and whether any case-linked design works under your state's adopted version of the rule is a state-specific ethics question, so put it in front of your state bar's ethics counsel before it lands in an offer letter.

The second line is a federal bankruptcy statute.

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 a document for filing in a bankruptcy case for compensation.

A paralegal working under the debtor's attorney sits outside that definition; a person who prepares filings for debtors directly, for pay, sits inside it.

The statute attaches duties to the label: a petition preparer must sign each prepared document, give the debtor an official written notice that the preparer is not an attorney and may not practise law or give legal advice, and list an identifying number on the filing.

If a pay design contemplates handing filing work — and per-filing pay — to someone who is not a supervised member of your firm's staff, work out with bankruptcy and employment counsel which side of that definition the arrangement lands on before you send the agreement.

How big should any incentive be?

Our research found no primary-source benchmark for staff bonus ranges — or for paralegal billing-rate benchmarks or billable-hour targets — so there is no honest number to quote here.

Set it from your budget and the candidate's expectations, and treat any vendor table that promises a fixed percentage as marketing.

Honesty first: none of the sources behind this page is a ranked survey of what bankruptcy-paralegal candidates value in a benefits package, so any list of what matters most is somebody's guess, including ours.

Build the package from what you can verify and what your own candidates ask for in interviews.

One concrete thing the law does tell you: in Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado and Connecticut, the benefits description is posting content, not just offer content.

Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees to disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits and other compensation in each posting — in effect since January 1, 2023.

Illinois requires the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting at 15 or more employees, and a hyperlink to a public page with that information is allowed.

Minnesota requires employers with 30 or more employees in the state to list the starting salary range and a general description of benefits, and its ranges may not be open-ended.

Colorado requires employers to disclose compensation and benefits in all internal and public job postings.

And Connecticut's rule, effective October 1, 2026, requires the wage or wage range and a general description of benefits in every internal or public job advertisement.

So write the actual package down before you post: health coverage, retirement, paid time off, schedule expectations around filing deadlines and court dates, any training budget, and the review cadence you will commit to.

Retirement has a specific footing here — Model Rule 5.4(a)(3) expressly lets a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan even though the plan is based in whole or in part on profit-sharing.

A small firm that cannot match a large employer's plan menu can still be specific about what it does offer; our guide to benefits small firms offer has the building blocks.

Build the number from your band, not from the candidate's past.

Asking about salary history is restricted by state law.

California's Labor Code 432.3 bars employers of any size — public employers included — from seeking an applicant's salary history, including compensation and benefits, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, and from relying on it in deciding whether to hire or what to pay.

New York's Labor Law 194-a bars relying on an applicant's wage or salary history and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted, or obtaining it from a current or former employer.

Illinois law makes it unlawful to screen applicants by salary history, to request it as a condition of an interview or offer, or to seek it from a current or former employer.

And Massachusetts bars seeking a prospective employee's wage or salary history from the candidate or from a current or former employer.

Those are the four states the paragraph above details — not a count of the salary-history rules out there.

Our research also shows restrictions in Connecticut, Virginia and Nevada, other states have their own, and many cities do too.

Check the current rule where you hire with your state labor agency before the question leaves your mouth.

Ask about expectations for this role instead.

California's statute expressly preserves the right to ask an applicant's salary expectation for the position, and if an applicant volunteers salary history without prompting, the employer may consider it.

New York and Massachusetts reopen the question later: under New York's law, an employer may confirm salary history only if, at the time an offer with compensation is made, the applicant responds by providing prior wage or salary information; Massachusetts allows confirmation only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation has been made.

California adds a duty that cuts your way — on reasonable request, you must provide the position's pay scale to an applicant, regardless of employer size, so have the band written down before interviews start.

Post the range before candidates ask.

California requires employers with 15 or more employees to include the pay scale in any job posting and to give it to any third party that posts for them, and it defines pay scale as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range you reasonably expect to pay on hire — with penalties running $100 to $10,000 per violation.

New York requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges for advertised jobs.

Massachusetts requires employers with 25 or more employees in the state to disclose the pay range in postings, effective October 29, 2025.

Colorado requires compensation and benefits disclosure in all internal and public job postings.

So post the band you would actually pay — a good-faith estimate of the job as scoped, not a number you intend to negotiate under.

The rest of a winning offer is sequencing, not money.

Put the pay terms in writing — the hourly rate or salary, the classification decision and its basis, how overtime is recorded and approved, and any bonus formula written out in full.

Attach the benefits package you drafted for the posting, name the first review date, and clear the non-pay checks — credential and reference verification and your supervision plan — before the letter goes out.

Review the band on a calendar, not on a resignation.

An annual review is a workable rhythm for a seat like this, plus a re-benchmark whenever you re-post the role or lose a candidate to a competing offer.

Date-stamp whatever number you bring to the discussion — a figure quoted without its release date is not a benchmark.

Two kinds of numbers move under you.

Published data: the wage figures on this page are the OEWS May 2025 release, the latest one available, so check whether BLS has published a newer one before each benchmarking round.

Statutory floors: for an hourly, non-exempt seat, state minimum wages set the floor under your band, and they move — California's minimum wage rose to $16.90 per hour on January 1, 2026, and Washington's is $17.13 per hour in 2026.

If you instead claim an exemption for a paralegal with an advanced degree from another field, the federal salary level — $684 per week, $35,568 a year, as enforced by DOL as of October 2026 — moves when DOL moves it.

A state threshold, where one applies, can sit above the federal level and move on its own schedule: California's is pegged to two times the state minimum wage ($70,304 a year in 2026) and Washington's to 2.25 times it ($80,168.40 a year in 2026), so each rises when that state's minimum wage does.

A rate set just above a floor can fall below it when the state resets the number, so re-check the floors whenever your state announces new rates, and re-check any exemption whose salary sits close to the line with employment counsel.

Then keep the internal promise.

Put the first review date in the offer itself, and bring the refreshed band to it: a raise decided from data reads as a system, while one decided by a counteroffer reads as a discount that got corrected.

The cheapest raise you will ever approve is the one that keeps a bankruptcy paralegal you have already trained holding your filing volume together.

Employer information, not legal advice. The wage figures on this page are BLS OEWS May 2025 data for the combined Paralegals and Legal Assistants occupation (SOC 23-2011), not a bankruptcy-paralegal wage series, and the overtime, posting, salary-history, petition-preparer and fee-sharing rules described here change and vary by state — confirm what applies to your firm with your state labor agency, employment counsel, your state bar's ethics counsel and, on the petition-preparer statute, bankruptcy counsel before you act on them.