How much should a law firm pay a criminal defense attorney?

BLS does not split its lawyer occupation (SOC 23-1011) by practice area, so criminal defense is priced from the one occupation that covers all lawyers in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release.

In that release, lawyers had a national median annual wage of $159,670 and a 10th percentile of $78,360; the middle half — the 25th to 75th percentiles — spans $102,990 to $221,370.

The series measures wage-earning lawyers and excludes the self-employed, so it describes the market your posting competes in, not what firm owners take home.

Geography moves the number.

Among states in the same release, New York had the highest lawyer median wage ($207,860), followed by DC ($195,190) and California ($195,080), while Mississippi was lowest at $91,690.

The national median is a map pin; your state's figure is where the range starts.

Our criminal defense attorney salary data page shows the all-lawyer figures, labelled a proxy — BLS prices the occupation, not the practice area — and links on to the Lawyer salary page for the full percentile table and pay in every state.

Start there, then check the range against what defense firms near you actually post.

If they are hiring now, the criminal defense attorney jobs on this board show how competing postings describe the role, the case mix and the pay.

Firm size has the clearest sourced gradient — from a survey that skews large.

NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey found a median first-year associate base salary of $200,000 as of January 1, 2025, rising to $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers; among firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, a first-year salary of $150,000 or less was the most common response, at 44% of offices.

Read the sample before the numbers: NALP's survey covers 437 offices and skews large — our research notes it does not represent two-to-twenty-lawyer firms well — so don't read it as a small-firm benchmark.

In six major markets in the same survey — Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and the Washington, DC area — the median first-year salary was $225,000.

Those are associate-market anchors, not criminal defense benchmarks, but they show how sharply the same entry-level title moves with firm size and city.

Experience is where the surveys run out.

The sourced figures above are first-year numbers; our research holds no salary curve for defense lawyers by years at the bar.

Price experience from your local market instead: what a second chair must handle alone, what a first-chair hire costs in the postings you compete with, and what a lawyer's courtroom volume out of a government defense office is worth to your caseload.

Practice area shows up through the money a matter brings in.

Retained work, panel appointments and court-appointed work price differently, and the one rate our research verifies is federal: the maximum hourly rate for CJA panel attorneys in federal non-capital cases is $177 for work performed on or after January 1, 2026, up from $175 in 2025 and $172 in 2024.

If appointed revenue is part of the caseload you are staffing, that ceiling is an input to what the role can pay — the next section works it into the structure.

Pick the structure knowing what federal law does not require.

Job titles do not determine exemption status; the specific duties and salary must meet the regulations.

For lawyers the salary requirement drops out: under 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 salary requirements do not apply — DOL's Fact Sheet 17D says the same, that the salary and salary-basis requirements do not apply to bona fide practitioners of law.

That leaves salary, hourly and per-case structures open federally for a licensed, practicing attorney.

Two limits sit inside that freedom.

A graduate awaiting bar results is not covered by the lawyer's exemption and must meet another exemption's salary and duties tests or be paid overtime — for the executive, administrative and professional exemptions, the federal standard salary level is $684 per week ($35,568 a year) as DOL enforced it as of October 2026.

And states add their own tests.

California is the exception to plan around: a practicing lawyer there is exempt only if they also earn a monthly salary of at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time work — $70,304 a year ($1,352 a week) at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90 — and California requires overtime after eight hours in a workday for non-exempt employees.

Washington exempts practicing lawyers from its overtime salary threshold, and Colorado lets lawyers qualify on duties alone, without a minimum salary.

Have employment counsel confirm the classification for the structure you pick, in your state.

Per-case pay needs one more distinction: who is being paid.

The ethics rules our research verifies govern payments to nonlawyers: 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 Model Rule 7.2(b) bars, with narrow exceptions, giving anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services — the trap behind per-signup intake bonuses.

Model Rule 5.4(a)(3) does let a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan based in whole or in part on profit-sharing.

These are model rules; your state's adopted version governs, so confirm any case-linked bonus or per-case component — including one paid to your employed attorney — with your state bar's ethics counsel before it goes in an offer.

When the per-case payee is another firm — a contract defense attorney who is not your employee — ABA Model Rule 1.5(e) allows a fee division between lawyers in different firms only if it is proportional to services (or each lawyer assumes joint responsibility), the client agrees in a confirmed writing that includes each share, and the total fee is reasonable.

However the fee arrives, the salary is paid out of what the practice collects, not what it bills.

Clio's 2025 Legal Trends Report — drawn from its users, mostly solo and small firms, so do not read it as big-firm data — puts the average law-firm utilization rate at 38% of the hours in a workday, with an average realization rate of 88% (the share of billable work invoiced) and a collection rate of 93% (the share of invoiced work paid).

Run your own matter economics through that gap before you commit to a number: a flat-fee caseload that covers a salary on paper can fall short once unbillable hours and unpaid invoices are priced in.

Our research holds no survey ranking benefits for defense lawyers, so we won't invent one.

What the record supports is one benefit that changes the whole conversation, and a set of low-cost items you control.

The conversation-changer is loan forgiveness you cannot offer.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the remaining Direct Loan balance after the equivalent of 120 qualifying monthly payments made while working full time — a weekly average of at least 30 hours — for a qualifying employer, and eligibility depends on the employer, not the job: U.S. government organizations at any level and 501(c)(3) nonprofits qualify, and private law firms do not.

A hire out of a public defender's office may be years into that path, so it is fair to name in the offer what your firm competes with instead: pay, courtroom reps, the cases worth trying.

The low-cost items are the ones a small firm can actually deliver, and they belong in the posting: covered bar dues and CLE costs where your state requires continuing legal education, protected trial-prep time, malpractice coverage with a clear statement of who pays it, and the pay-review date the last section puts on the calendar.

Benefits are also a posting input, not just a sweetener: Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees to disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each job posting, and Illinois requires the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting at the same headcount.

Describe what actually applies to the role, and confirm your state's posting rules with its labor agency.

Start with what you may ask.

California Labor Code 432.3 bars all employers — any size — 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; it does let you ask about salary expectations, and lets you consider history the applicant volunteers unprompted.

An applicant can also request the position's pay scale, which the employer must provide on reasonable request regardless of employer size.

New York 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; confirmation is allowed only after an offer with compensation is made and the applicant responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number.

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 a prospective employee's wage or salary history from the candidate or a current or former employer; it may be confirmed only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation has been made.

Our research also verified salary-history bans in Connecticut, which bars asking unless the applicant volunteers it, and in Virginia and Nevada.

That is still not the complete list of jurisdictions — many cities and states have their own rules — so check your state labor agency before the interview loop.

Then put your number where posting laws may already require it.

Verified posting rules require the pay scale in job postings for employers with 15 or more employees in California, Washington and Illinois, four or more in New York, 25 or more in Massachusetts and 30 or more in Minnesota; Virginia and Colorado require pay disclosed in postings too (our research did not confirm Virginia's employer-size threshold), and Connecticut's posting requirement took effect October 1, 2026.

That is the set our research verified, not a complete list.

California defines the pay scale as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire, with penalties of $100 to $10,000 per violation — so post a range you can defend, not a bait figure.

With the range public, the offer competes on the terms around it.

Write down the structure (salary, hourly or per-case components), what moves a candidate up the range — trial reps, languages, caseload ownership — and the review date from the next section.

A candidate comparing your offer against a government defense job is comparing the whole package, and certainty about all of it is the part you can deliver tonight.

The full process — sourcing, screening, conflicts, onboarding — is in our guide to how to hire a criminal defense attorney.

No survey our research could cite sets a review cadence for law firm pay, so anchor the calendar to the events that move the number:

• Each benchmark refresh. The figures on this page are the OEWS May 2025 release and NALP's January 1, 2025 snapshot; both age. Re-run the posting scan before each hiring cycle — the method in our guide to benchmarking law firm pay turns that scan into a repeatable range review.
• When the statutory numbers move. Numbers inside your structure reset on their own schedules: California's two-times-minimum-wage test works out to $70,304 a year at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90 and moves when the state minimum wage does, and the federal CJA maximum rose in 2025 and again in 2026 — $172 in 2024, $175 in 2025, $177 for work performed on or after January 1, 2026.
• After any structure change. A raise, a per-case component, or a move from hourly to salary can change the overtime analysis — have employment counsel re-check classification when pay changes, not just at hire.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. The wage figures come from the BLS OEWS May 2025 release and NALP's 2025 survey as cited; the wage-and-hour, pay-history, posting and ethics rules above are federal regulations, state statutes and model rules that change and vary by state. Confirm your pay structure and offers with employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel.