Contract attorney job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A contract attorney posting has five working parts: the engagement's shape and duties, bar admission and qualifications, skills and software, pay and schedule, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

One difference from a permanent hire: the posting has to answer questions a permanent posting can leave to the interview — how long the engagement runs, how many hours a week it carries, who supervises the work, and whether it can grow into more.

If you are still deciding what you need — project support versus coverage versus overflow capacity, direct hire versus agency — our guide to how to hire a contract attorney covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

Core duties.

Write the work the engagement actually contains, so a candidate can price their time against it.

Two framing lines earn their place in the duties block.

The first is the project's shape: document review or discovery overflow, trial or hearing coverage, leave coverage, a briefing project, a matter that needs extra hands — name it.

The second is supervision: name the lawyer responsible for the matter and the review the work gets — our guide to what Model Rule 5.1 requires when you supervise lawyers covers the duties that come with that role.

Duties worth a line on the posting:

• Reviewing and analyzing document productions — privilege screening, issue coding, [first-level review on the firm's review platform]
• Drafting discovery responses and objections, research memoranda, motions and briefs to the project's deadlines
• [Appearing at hearings or depositions in [State], if the engagement includes court work]
• Covering a leave, a trial surge or a matter overflow while the firm recruits a permanent lawyer
• Working on the firm's conflicts-cleared systems under the supervision of [the responsible attorney]
• [Handing off deliverables at the milestones the engagement names — say what "done" looks like]

One boundary shapes the duties block: the work has to sit inside the jurisdictions where the contract attorney is authorized to practice.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(a) says a lawyer must not practice law in a jurisdiction in violation of its regulation of the legal profession, or assist another in doing so — the assist clause is the firm's exposure, so write the court appearances and filings to match where the hire's license actually runs.

If the project could use a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction, ABA Model Rule 5.5(c) lets a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction (and not suspended or disbarred) provide legal services on a temporary basis in four situations — one is in association with a lawyer admitted in the jurisdiction who actively participates in the matter.

States adopt their own versions of the Model Rules, so confirm the wording that fits your jurisdiction with your state bar's ethics counsel before you write an out-of-state line into the posting.

Qualifications and bar admission.

The credential line does the heavy lifting on this block, because it is the one you can and should verify.

Write it as "[State] bar admission in good standing" — the state where the work happens, not a generic "licensed attorney."

Then verify it: the ABA says lawyers are licensed by a state agency in each state, that agency can confirm whether a person has a law license and may practice there, and the ABA keeps a state-by-state directory of those agencies — in New Hampshire and South Dakota, the directory says you call the bar.

Our guide to verifying an attorney's bar status before hiring walks the check.

A resume line is not a license check; run it before you rely on the credential, and again before the first deliverable.

Decide what you will accept and write exactly that.

A posting that says "any U.S. bar admission accepted" pulls applications you cannot use unless you have confirmed the temporary-practice path in the duties block above.

If you would hire a law school graduate who has not yet been admitted, be careful twice over: states' rules on what an unadmitted graduate may do vary, and our research did not verify them, so confirm with your state's admitting authority before you post the role — and know the title rule, because a lawyer not admitted in a jurisdiction must not hold out or represent that they are admitted to practice law there (ABA Model Rule 5.5(b)(2)), which covers the title and bio lines you write for the engagement.

Experience follows the required-versus-preferred split: "[X]+ years in [practice area or document review]" if you mean it; otherwise move it to a preferred line so you do not screen out candidates whose experience transfers.

The candidate-side view of project work is in our contract attorney career guide.

Skills and software.

Name the systems the project actually runs on — the review or eDiscovery platform, the e-filing setup, the legal research service, the case management and timekeeping tools — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

Beyond software, the skills that matter on project work are specific: drafting that holds up without a rewrite, deadline discipline across parallel deliverables, sound review judgment, and status communication that does not need chasing.

A posting that names its real stack and its real expectations filters better than one that lists "strong legal skills."

Pay range and benefits.

Set the rate basis first — an hourly range for a defined-scope project, an annualized range for a long-running coverage engagement — and put the range in the posting.

One honest gap to know: our research did not confirm a quotable hourly range for contract or document-review work in the sources we read, so there is no benchmark table we can responsibly print here.

The closest federal series is a proxy: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, lawyers (SOC 23-1011) had a median annual wage of $159,670 ($76.76 per hour), with the 10th percentile at $78,360 and the 90th percentile at $351,600 — that is the whole lawyer profession, not a contract rate.

In the same release, lawyers in the Legal Services industry (law firms, NAICS 5411) had a median annual wage of $157,870.

OEWS excludes self-employed workers, so it does not measure the income of lawyers working as independent contractors — a contract attorney paid as an independent contractor rather than an employee is outside the estimates.

State figures are on our contract attorney salary page, and the live contract attorney jobs on this board show the rate framings you are competing against.

If the engagement is hourly, say the expected hours a week alongside the rate.

On classification: under the federal FLSA regulations (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 — so an hourly W-2 contract attorney can still be exempt under federal law.

Classification turns on the duties and the arrangement, and states add their own rules; confirm yours with employment counsel before you write the posting's hours language.

Whatever range you post should be one you believe — and in the places our research verified, the law says the pay range belongs in the posting itself: California (employers with 15 or more employees, which must also hand the pay scale to any third party posting for them), Washington (15 or more; wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits, in effect since January 1, 2023), Illinois (15 or more; pay scale and benefits, a hyperlink allowed), Minnesota (30 or more employees in the state; starting salary range and benefits description, and ranges may not be open-ended), Massachusetts (25 or more in the state; effective October 29, 2025), New York State (four or more employees), New York City (since November 1, 2022), Colorado (compensation and benefits in all postings), Connecticut (effective October 1, 2026) and Virginia (wage, salary or range in each posting).

California defines "pay scale" as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire, with penalties running $100 to $10,000 per violation, and an employer there must also give an applicant the position's pay scale on reasonable request regardless of employer size.

Other places have their own rules we did not read, and the thresholds move — check with your state labor agency before you post.

The benefits block is where an engagement posting earns trust.

List what the rate includes and what it does not: who provides software and workspace, whether the engagement is covered by the firm's malpractice policy, the payment cadence, and whether bar dues or CLE support apply.

State the hours expectation as the firm's own number rather than leaving it to guesswork.

If the engagement carries any bonus tied to outcomes or collections, confirm the structure with your state bar's ethics counsel before you promise it in a posting.

Before yours goes live, confirm the two rules that move: pay-disclosure rules with your state labor agency, and anything touching licensure with your state bar's ethics counsel or your state's admitting authority.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

In a small firm, the engagement exists because a specific matter needs hands, so write that shape in honestly: the project type, the expected duration, the hours a week it really carries, and the lawyer who supervises.

Say plainly whether strong work can lead to more projects or a permanent role — but only if it can, because a conversion you did not mean costs you the candidate twice.

And write the rate you actually budgeted rather than a number copied from a posting in a bigger market; a range you can stand behind saves renegotiating with the contractor you wanted.

Adapting for a practice area or project type.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the deliverables the matter produces.

A litigation overflow engagement lives in document review, discovery responses, motions and hearings in the jurisdictions where the hire is admitted; trial coverage lives in the pretrial and courtroom tasks the trial team cannot absorb; a briefing project is research memoranda and drafts against a filing calendar; document review at volume is screening quality, privilege judgment and issue coding.

Let the requirements block follow the same logic: ask for experience with the work the project generates, not "legal experience" in the abstract.

Adapting for remote or out-of-state contract work.

If the hire will sit in one state and the work happens in another, the posting has to say where the work happens.

ABA Formal Opinion 495 (Dec.

16, 2020) treats a lawyer as able to practice the law of their licensing jurisdiction while physically present in a state where they are not admitted, if that state has not deemed the conduct the unauthorized practice of law and the lawyer does not hold out as locally licensed, advertise a local office, or offer local legal services — and the opinion says local contact information on websites, letterhead or business cards would improperly establish a local office.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(b)(1) separately bars a lawyer not admitted in a jurisdiction from establishing an office or other systematic and continuous presence for practicing law there, except as the Rules or other law authorize.

For a posting, that means a remote line should describe work for your firm's clients under the hire's existing license, and the arrangement is worth confirming with your state bar's ethics counsel before you publish it.

Adapting when the engagement runs through a staffing agency.

If a legal staffing agency supplies the lawyer, your posting still carries the duties, the duration and the rate basis — the candidate reads your project, not the agency's boilerplate.

The agency-side decisions are in our guide to legal staffing agencies vs hiring directly.

Seven wordings sink otherwise good contract attorney postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. License-scope wording that invites practice where the hire is not admitted.

A lawyer not admitted in a jurisdiction must not hold out to the public or otherwise represent that they are admitted to practice law there (ABA Model Rule 5.5(b)(2)) — so a title, bio or posting line that reads as licensed-in-your-state for a hire who is not is the trap, and it is the firm's problem as much as the lawyer's: Model Rule 5.5(a) says a lawyer must not practice law in a jurisdiction in violation of its regulation of the profession, or assist another in doing so.

Write the admission requirement as the state where the work happens, treat any out-of-state or remote line as a confirm-with-ethics-counsel question before the posting goes up, and remember these are the ABA's model rules — your state's adopted version governs.

2. Preference wording that screens by who people are.

The EEOC says it is illegal to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for, or discourages applications from, people because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information — its own example is an ad seeking "recent college graduates," which may discourage people over 40 from applying.

Write about the work, not the person: cut "young," "digital native" and "recent grad" from a contract attorney posting the same as any other.

3. Application questions that are not essential.

Keep application questions to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified — the EEOC treats questions about race, sex, national origin, age or religion as irrelevant to that decision — and treat the borderline ones as risky rather than harmless, because federal law does not clearly forbid every such question but the answers can be used as evidence of discriminatory intent unless justified by a business purpose.

Keep the process accessible, too: an employer must provide an accommodation a disabled applicant needs in order to apply, unless it causes significant difficulty or expense.

4. Salary-history questions.

Several of the state laws we read restrict them.

California (Labor Code 432.3, all employers) bars seeking an applicant's salary history, and New York (Labor Law 194-a) bars relying on wage or salary history and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted, or seeking it from a current or former employer.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask an applicant about their salary expectation for the position.

Other states and cities have rules we did not read, so check yours before the interview stage.

5. Conviction-history questions too early.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) and New York City's Fair Chance Act (most employers) bar asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment.

If your application form asks about criminal record, check your state and city law before you post — other states and cities have fair-chance rules this page does not cover.

6. Sample projects that do the firm's real work.

A drafting exercise on a live matter can cross a line: the FLSA defines "employ" to include "to suffer or permit to work" (29 U.S.C.

203(g)), so a candidate producing real, usable work for the firm — a brief the firm files, a memo the matter uses — may be an employee owed wages.

A short exercise on a mock file is the safer design — and our research found no DOL guidance on unpaid hiring tests specifically, so the clean approach is to pay for any exercise that produces real work.

7. Vague everything.

"Contract attorney wanted," no project type, no duration, no hours, no rate basis — an umbrella posting pulls applications across every experience level and saves you none of the sorting.

The fix is the template above: name the project type, the deliverables, the expected hours and duration, who supervises, and a range you believe.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — contract attorneys price their calendars, and a slow reply reads as a closed door.

If the duration, hours or rate change, update the posting rather than explaining the difference in interviews.

Prepare the interview the same way for every candidate — the same questions, the same structure, a scoring sheet — so comparisons stay fair and every question stays tied to the project.

And before yours goes up, browse the live contract attorney jobs on this board to see the rate framings and duty lists you are competing against.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. Posting laws, bar-admission rules and ethics rules change and vary by jurisdiction — confirm them with your state labor agency, your state's admitting authority, employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel before you post.