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

An employment attorney posting has five working parts: the side of the docket and the duties that come with it, 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 which side to hire for, what the role should cost, or where to find candidates, our guide to how to hire an employment attorney covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

If this is your first posting, the fundamentals of writing a law firm job posting — structure, length, where to publish — carry over to this role like any other.

Core duties and responsibilities.

Write the work a candidate can picture, not adjectives — and in this practice, write the side first.

A plaintiff-side employment attorney represents employees in workplace disputes; a management-side employment attorney advises and defends employers on the same claims from the other chair.

Duties worth a line on the posting:

• Representing [employees / employers] in [discrimination / retaliation / harassment / wage and hour / leave / wrongful termination] matters, from [intake and case evaluation] through [settlement / hearing / trial]
• [Plaintiff side:] Evaluating prospective matters and drafting demand letters in pre-litigation negotiation
• [Management side:] Advising clients on handbooks, policies, wage and hour practices and individual discipline and separation decisions
• Handling the administrative stage of employment claims: [preparing charge filings / preparing responses to agency charges and position statements]
• Drafting [demand letters, pleadings, discovery requests and responses, motions]
• Taking and defending depositions and arguing motions [as experience allows]
• Advising clients on case risk, value and next steps at each stage of a matter
• Negotiating [settlements, severance and separation agreements]
• [Second-chairing hearings and trial, or first-chairing matters that match the level you are hiring]
• Managing deadlines, the caseload and client communication

One boundary shapes the duties block: the 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.

Employment matters can reach across state lines when a client's workforce does, which makes it tempting to write multistate coverage around a one-state license; decide the jurisdictions first, then write the duties to match.

Rule 5.5 is the ABA's model text — the binding version is the one in your state's own professional-conduct rules, 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 your clients and your court sit, 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.

Our walkthrough of verifying bar status before hiring covers the lookup step by step.

Decide what you will accept and write exactly that.

"Admitted in any state" pulls applications you cannot use.

If you would consider a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction, know the model-rule boundary before you write the line: 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 listed situations, one of which is association with a locally admitted lawyer who actively participates in the matter.

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 required-versus-preferred split: agency charge work, plaintiff-side case evaluation, defense-side litigation, employer advisory practice — put the background your docket actually needs on the required line and leave the rest as preferred, so you do not screen out candidates whose experience fits.

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

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — case management, e-filing or the court's portal, document management, legal research, and whatever you use to calendar deadlines — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

The non-software skills that matter on an employment docket are specific: charge-response and position-statement drafting under deadline; plain-English counseling for clients making decisions about people — discipline, separation, accommodation; negotiation on either side of a dispute; discretion with sensitive personnel facts; and the judgment to value a case realistically instead of emotionally.

A posting that names its real stack and real expectations filters better than one that lists "strong communication 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 firm owners take home, and our sources carry no practice-area split — this is the all-lawyers series, not an employment-law figure.

State figures are on our employment 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 own Class of 2025 starting-salary curve shows the spread across all reported full-time jobs: $60,000 to $100,000 accounted for 50.0% of the 22,715 reported salaries, while $225,000 accounted for 21.5% — a Class-of-2025 snapshot, not a rate to copy into your range.

NALP's sample is large-firm-heavy, so treat the 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.

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 in the posting, a hyperlink allowed, for jobs performed at least partly in Illinois or reporting to an Illinois supervisor), 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 employees in the state; effective October 29, 2025), New York State (businesses with four or more employees), New York City (a good-faith range in job advertisements since November 1, 2022), Colorado (compensation and benefits in all internal and public postings), Connecticut (effective October 1, 2026) and Virginia (the wage, salary or range in each public and internal posting).

Nevada works the other way: the wage or salary range goes to an applicant who has completed an interview, not into the 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.

More than a dozen states plus DC have some form of these rules, each with its own coverage conditions, 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 the deadline spikes agency charges and filing dates bring, 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 practicing 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.

Job titles do not decide exemption status; duties and salary do.

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 small firm, the hire is the practice area, so write the breadth in honestly: the matters they will own end to end, the clients 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 the side you are hiring.

Rewrite the duties around the chair the hire sits in.

A plaintiff-side docket hires for case evaluation and pre-litigation leverage — screening prospective matters, demand letters, building a case the firm chose deliberately — and if the firm runs those matters on contingency, say how the practice's economics shape the job, because a lawyer arriving from an hourly practice needs to know the rhythm changes.

A management-side docket hires for counseling depth and charge defense — handbooks, discipline decisions, position statements, and being the steady voice when a client wants to act first.

If your hire genuinely does both, say so and say which half dominates the calendar.

Adapting for a practice-area slice.

"Employment law" covers dockets that hire differently: a wage-and-hour-heavy practice hires for classification analysis and document-heavy discovery; a charge-defense docket hires for position statements and agency procedure; a counseling-heavy role hires for handbook, policy and training work with little courtroom time.

Ask for the slice you run, not "employment law experience" in the abstract — and if the role includes supervising paralegals or legal assistants, say so; our guide to supervising non-lawyer staff under Rule 5.3 covers the structure that duty needs.

Adapting for hybrid or remote days.

Employment work invites remote arrangements — a counseling docket can run from anywhere — but 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 — our guide to hiring attorneys licensed in another state covers the questions to ask first.

Six wordings sink otherwise good employment-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 an employment-law 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 — compensation and benefits, orally or in writing — and from relying on it in hiring or pay decisions; 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; Illinois (820 ILCS 112) bars screening applicants by it, requesting it as a condition of an interview or offer, and seeking it from employers; Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A) bars seeking it from the candidate or their employers, with confirmation allowed only after voluntary disclosure or an offer with compensation.

Virginia's posting law also bans seeking salary history, Nevada pairs its after-interview range disclosure with the same ban, and Connecticut bars asking about wage and salary history unless the applicant volunteers it.

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.

Your firm is an employer first, and 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; New York City's Fair Chance Act makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider criminal history before a conditional offer; and Illinois's law bars covered employers from asking until the applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview — or, with no interview, until after 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. Work samples and tests that cross a line.

If you ask applicants for a writing sample, hold it to the same standard the EEOC sets for required tests: the EEOC says if an employer requires applicants to take a test, the test must be necessary and related to the job and must not exclude people of a protected group or people with disabilities.

Design any exercise as work product you would not file, too: the FLSA's definition of "employ" includes "to suffer or permit to work," so a candidate doing real, usable work for the firm — drafting a brief the firm files — may be an employee owed wages; a short exercise on a mock file is the safer design.

6. Vague everything.

"Employment attorney wanted," no side, no case mix, no level, no range — an umbrella posting pulls applications across both sides of the docket and saves you none of the sorting.

The fix is the template above: name the side — employees or employers — the matters, the advisory-versus-litigation split, the stage ownership a hire takes on, and a range you believe.

If the level is associate, say associate.

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 employment 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.