Criminal defense attorney job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A criminal defense posting has five working parts: the defense work, the bar admission you require, the skills and systems, a good-faith pay range with benefits, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

If you are still deciding what the role needs — the case mix, the seniority, where to source candidates — our guide to how to hire a criminal defense attorney covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

Core duties.

Write the defense work a candidate can picture, not adjectives: the charges they will defend, the courts you appear in, how far into a case they carry it, and who they answer to.

Defense work runs in stages, so say where this hire joins — at first appearance carrying the matter to trial, or on pretrial litigation while a lead tries the case.

If the attorney will direct paralegals or legal assistants, say so too — supervising nonlawyer staff carries ethics duties of its own, and our guide to supervising non-lawyer staff under Rule 5.3 covers the structure.

Duties worth a line on the posting:

• Representing clients charged with [case mix: misdemeanor / felony / federal offenses] from first appearance through resolution
• Advising clients — including clients in custody — and their families on charges, options and next steps
• Directing investigators, experts and specialists to build the defense
• Drafting and arguing pretrial motions [plus release arguments, if your practice includes them]
• Negotiating with prosecutors and counseling clients on plea decisions
• Trying cases that do not resolve
• Managing the caseload, court deadlines and client communication
• [Handling appointed or panel matters alongside retained work — say how the two are staffed and paid]

One boundary shapes the duties block: the defense work has to sit inside the jurisdictions where the hire 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 profession, or assist another in doing so — and the "assist" clause is the firm's exposure, not just the lawyer's.

Court appearances, filings and jail visits all happen in a named place, so write the courts and counties to match where the hire's license actually runs.

These are the ABA's model rules; your state adopts its own version, so confirm the wording that fits with your state bar's ethics counsel.

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 association.

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

Decide what you will accept and write exactly that.

"Admitted in any state" or "strong trial background" pulls applications you cannot use.

If you would consider a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction, check with your state's admitting authority on how that lawyer becomes admitted where you practice before you write a waive-in line — the paths and their conditions are state-specific and not something a posting should promise.

If you would hire a graduate who is not yet admitted, be careful twice over: states' rules on what an unadmitted graduate may do were not verified in our research, 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)).

Experience follows the same required-versus-preferred split: backgrounds that transfer into private defense work — a public defender's or prosecutor's courtroom time, another firm's caseload — belong on a preferred line unless you genuinely require them, so you do not screen out candidates whose experience fits.

The candidate-side view of the practice is in our criminal defense attorney career guide.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — case management, e-filing, legal research, and whatever you use to review and organize discovery when a case carries a large document set — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

The non-software skills that matter in a defense practice are specific: courtroom advocacy, calendar control across a live caseload, client communication with people under stress, and the judgment to flag a problem in a file early rather than late.

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

Pay range and benefits.

Anchor the range in your market and your budget, then adjust for the duties you wrote above.

The national benchmark: 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 — the spread of the whole profession, not a floor and a cap for your hire.

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 lawyers, so it does not measure what equity partners or solo practitioners take home.

State figures are on our criminal defense attorney salary page.

A second anchor, from a different survey: NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey put the median first-year associate base salary at $200,000 as of January 1, 2025 — but among firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, a first-year salary of $150,000 or less was the most common response (44% of offices).

NALP's sample is large-firm-heavy, so treat those figures as context for where the market sits, not as the number your firm must match; set the range from what the role you wrote actually is.

If your mix includes appointed federal work, the figure your candidates may know is the Criminal Justice Act panel maximum: $177 per hour for panel attorneys in non-capital federal cases, for work performed on or after January 1, 2026.

State appointed-counsel programs are administered separately and their rates were not verified in our research — say in the posting how your firm staffs and pays panel matters rather than assuming an applicant knows.

Whatever range you post should be one you believe — and in the jurisdictions listed below — each verified from statute or the state agency — the law requires pay information in the posting itself: California (employers with 15 or more employees, which must also give the pay scale to any third party that posts 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 a 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 (the wage, salary or range in each posting).

California also requires the pay scale on an applicant's reasonable request regardless of employer size, and it 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.

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

Two more blocks finish the posting.

The benefits block is where a small firm competes on honesty rather than size: list what you actually offer — health coverage, retirement plan, paid time off, bar dues and CLE support, malpractice coverage — and state your hours expectation, including on-call or after-arrest availability and any billable target, as your firm's own numbers.

And classification: under federal law (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 — but California has no such carve-out, and exempts a practising attorney only if they also earn at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time work, which works out to $70,304 a year ($1,352 a week) at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90.

Confirm classification with employment counsel in your state before you set the posting's pay line.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

In a two-to-ten lawyer defense firm, the hire is the practice area, so write the breadth in honestly: the matters they will own from first appearance to resolution, the clients and families they will counsel directly, the staff they will direct.

A named supervisor matters more, not less — "reports to the managing attorney" tells a candidate who reviews their work and who they escalate to.

And post the range you actually budgeted rather than one copied from a big-firm survey; a range you can stand behind saves you from renegotiating with the candidate you wanted.

Adapting for a case mix.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the docket you actually run.

A misdemeanor-volume practice hires for speed — many clients, short timelines, a heavy court calendar.

A serious-felony practice hires for depth — investigation, experts, motion litigation and trials that start long before jury selection.

A federal or white-collar defense hire lives in documentary discovery and investigative practice as much as in court.

Let the requirements block follow the same logic: ask for experience with the kind of cases your firm takes, not "criminal experience" in the abstract.

If you expect a caseload target or after-hours arrest response, state it as the firm's own number rather than leaving it to guesswork.

Adapting for appointed and panel work.

If the firm takes court-appointed matters alongside retained clients, say so in the posting and say how the two are staffed and paid.

Federal panel work runs on its own compensation rules, and state appointment programs differ; we have not verified state rates, so describe your firm's own treatment and point candidates to the court or agency that administers appointments in your area for how that work is assigned.

Adapting for hybrid or remote days.

Court work anchors this role to specific courthouses, so say where the hire will appear and where they will work the rest of the week.

When part of the week is remote, the license question follows the lawyer, not the desk: 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.

Confirm the arrangement with your state bar's ethics counsel before you publish a hybrid line.

Five wordings sink otherwise good defense-firm postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Bar-admission 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 posting line that reads as licensed-in-your-state for a hire who is not is the trap, and the firm shares the exposure: Model Rule 5.5(a) bars a lawyer from practicing law in violation of a jurisdiction's regulation of the profession, or assisting another in doing so.

Write the admission requirement as the state where the work happens, and treat any role for an out-of-state or unadmitted lawyer as a confirm-with-the-admitting-authority question before the posting goes up.

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 defense posting the same as any other.

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 intent to discriminate unless justified by a business purpose.

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

3. Salary-history questions.

Several of the state laws we read restrict them.

California (Labor Code 432.3) bars all employers from seeking an applicant's salary history and from relying on it in hiring or pay decisions; New York (Labor Law 194-a) bars requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted, and seeking it from a current or former employer; Illinois (820 ILCS 112) bars screening by it, requiring it for an interview or offer, and seeking it from employers; Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A) bars seeking it from the candidate or their employers.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask about salary expectations for the position, and an applicant who volunteers history without prompting may have it considered.

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

4. Conviction-history questions too early.

A defense firm is an employer first: fair-chance timing rules apply to its own hiring like anyone else's.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) bars asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment, and New York City's Fair Chance Act makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider criminal history before a conditional offer.

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.

5. Vague everything.

"Defense attorney wanted," no case mix, no courts, no seniority, no range — an umbrella posting pulls applications across every level of experience and saves you none of the sorting.

The fix is the template above: name the case mix, the courts, the stage coverage a hire will own, and a range you believe.

If the level is associate, say associate; if the firm genuinely needs a lawyer flexible on level, say what the docket decides.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — a slow reply reads as a closed door.

If the pay range or the duties 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 job.

And before yours goes up, browse the live criminal defense attorney jobs on this board to see the pay framing 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.