How much should a law firm pay an employment attorney?

Start with the closest federal series.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program — its latest release is the May 2025 reference period — puts the national median annual wage for lawyers (SOC 23-1011) at $159,670 ($76.76 an hour), with a 10th percentile of $78,360 and a 90th percentile of $351,600, across 754,500 employed lawyers.

Read the top of that spread carefully: BLS footnotes published values at or above $239,200 a year ($115.00 an hour) as "equal to or greater than" — a cap that reaches this occupation's 90th percentile — so read the $351,600 as an approximate figure.

And OEWS excludes the self-employed, so the estimates do not measure what solo practitioners or equity partners earn.

That series covers all lawyers — the OEWS tables we pulled have no employment-attorney line — so treat it as the occupation's frame rather than the role's market number, and say so whenever you quote it.

The firm-side sector cut is lawyers in the Legal Services industry (law firms, NAICS 5411), at a median of $157,870 in the same OEWS release.

Both numbers come from the same OEWS release and statistic, so the comparison is like-for-like, and it suggests the all-industry lawyer line is a workable stand-in for firm pay when you need a single figure.

Then pull your state.

Among states in May 2025, the lawyer median (SOC 23-1011) ran from $207,860 in New York, $195,190 in DC and $195,080 in California down to $91,690 in Mississippi — a spread wide enough that a national number alone will misprice a state hire.

For state tables and percentiles, see our employment attorney salary data.

The method for turning them into a band you can defend — metro pulls, a floor and a top, re-dating — is our guide to benchmarking law firm pay.

Experience and firm size are the two levers with published numbers behind them in the sources routed for this page, and both come from NALP's Associate Salary Survey — a law-firm sample that leans large, so weight it to your own size before you copy a figure.

The 2025 edition found a median first-year associate base salary of $200,000 as of January 1, 2025, and $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers. $225,000 was the most common first-year salary, reported by 32% of offices overall and 45% of offices in firms of 701+ lawyers, and the median first-year salary hit $225,000 in six cities: Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and the Washington, DC area.

(The survey predates the mid-2026 market-scale moves covered in the last section below.)

At the other end of the size scale, a first-year salary of $150,000 or less was the most common response among firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, at 44% of offices.

NALP's Class of 2025 starting-salary curve explains why any single number misleads: it is bimodal, with salaries of $60,000 to $100,000 accounting for 50.0% of the 22,715 reported full-time salaries and $225,000 another 21.5% — two peaks, not one (and the curve spans all full-time jobs, not only law firms).

NALP also cautions that the unadjusted mean of its starting-salary data overstates the true average by about 5.5%, because large-firm salaries are more completely reported.

Above the first year, the published trail thins.

None of the sources routed for this page prices an employment attorney by class year or by side of the docket: there is no sourced employment-attorney premium or discount, and no sourced figure for what a fifth-year employment lawyer commands.

Set lateral and senior pay from your own salary ladder and the candidate's demonstrated work, and be skeptical of any table claiming to price the specialty until you have checked what it actually measures.

What the side of the docket does change is the structure of pay — which is the next question.

Structure follows your fee model, not the candidate's title.

The fit test is where the revenue shows up.

If the role's work converts through billed hours you can keep busy and collect, a base-heavy package with a bonus linked to billed work is the cleaner match.

If it converts through contingency recoveries, the base has to be one you can sustain while recoveries pend, with variable pay — where you pay one — tied to results that arrive on the recovery's schedule, not the payroll calendar's.

On the billable side, budget the base against collected revenue rather than billed time.

Clio's 2025 Legal Trends Report — drawn from Clio users, mostly small firms — puts average utilization at 38% (about 3 of 8 hours in a workday spent on billable work), realization at 88% (the share of billable work invoiced) and collection at 93% (the share of invoiced work paid).

Those are small-firm rates by Clio's own base, and they show the gap between the hours a salary has to survive and the hours that become cash.

If you benchmark a billable bonus against the large-firm market instead, know what those firms attach: legal press reporting on the 2026 scale season described market-scale firms commonly tying the scale to 1,900- or 2,000-hour billable expectations — Norton Rose Fulbright at 1,900, McDermott and Quinn Emanuel at 2,000.

Those are anchors from a different market, not a template for a boutique or plaintiff-side shop.

On the contingency side, our research found no sourced figure for contingency splits, case-result bonus formulas or a plaintiff-side pay premium, so this page will not invent one — the mix you set has to come from your own case economics.

One classification check belongs to this decision.

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 to that lawyer; job titles decide nothing either way, because duties do.

A graduate awaiting bar results is not covered by that exemption and must meet another exemption's salary and duties tests or be paid overtime.

California adds its own test: a practicing lawyer there is exempt only if the salary is also at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time (40-hour) work — $70,304 a year ($1,352 a week) at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90 — and California requires overtime for non-exempt employees after eight hours in a workday as well as over 40 in a week.

Our guide to law firm overtime rules covers the full map.

No source routed for this page surveys what employment-attorney candidates value in a package, so we will not rank perks for you.

What we can do is make the decision concrete: decide where your firm stands on health coverage, a retirement plan, CLE and bar dues, paid leave, hybrid or remote work, and bonus eligibility — then state each one plainly in the posting and the offer letter.

Part of the package may be required disclosure rather than choice.

The posting-range statutes we verified that also require a general description of benefits alongside the range cover Washington (employers with 15 or more employees), Illinois (15 or more), Minnesota (30 or more) and Connecticut (in effect since October 1, 2026), and Colorado requires compensation and benefits information in job postings generally.

Where your posting falls under one of those statutes, the benefits description is a disclosure, not marketing.

For what a small firm can realistically assemble — and how firms build benefits without a big-company budget — see our guide to benefits small firms offer.

Work the number out before the final interview — from the benchmarks above, your salary ladder and your fee model — rather than from whatever the candidate happened to earn last.

That last part is also the law in the states below, which changes how offers get made.

The states whose statutes we verified restrict the salary-history question.

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

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

Connecticut bars asking a prospective employee's wage and salary history unless the applicant volunteers it, and Virginia and Nevada ban seeking salary history as well.

We have named the states whose statutes this research read rather than publishing a count or a complete list — many cities and other states have their own rules.

What you can ask about is expectations.

California's statute expressly lets an employer ask an applicant's salary expectation for the position, and lets you consider salary history the applicant volunteers without prompting.

California also requires you to give an applicant the position's pay scale on reasonable request, regardless of employer size — the posting duty attaches at 15 or more employees.

New York allows one narrow confirmation: after a compensation offer is made, if the applicant responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number, you may confirm that history.

Massachusetts allows confirmation only after a voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation has been made.

Practically: anchor the offer to your band and the role, ask expectations, and leave the candidate's history out of the decision unless a statute's exception puts it there.

If the offer includes a signing bonus with a repayment clause, check California first.

For contracts entered into on or after January 1, 2026, California's stay-or-pay law (Bus. & Prof.

Code 16608) makes it unlawful to require a worker to pay a penalty, fee or cost — a quit fee or replacement-hire fee included — if employment ends.

A signing-bonus repayment clause survives only if it meets every condition in the statute's exception: it sits in a separate agreement; the worker is told they may consult a lawyer and gets at least five business days; repayment is interest-free and prorated over a retention period of no more than two years; the worker may instead defer the bonus to the end of that period; and repayment applies only on a voluntary quit or a firing for misconduct.

A worker can sue over a prohibited term for actual damages or $5,000 per worker, whichever is greater, plus injunctive relief and attorney's fees.

Clawback rules in states other than California were not part of this research — have employment counsel review the clause in every state you hire in.

The offer is also the last step of the hiring loop; the checks before it — license and credentials, where to find candidates, screening and interviewing — are our guide to how to hire an employment attorney.

Before the offer goes out: salary-history, posting-range and stay-or-pay rules are employment law — they change, and this page names only the statutes we verified.

Confirm the current rules for every state you hire in with your employment counsel.

Often enough to keep up with the data, because every benchmark on this page carries a date.

BLS's OEWS figures are the May 2025 reference period; NALP's associate medians are as of January 1, 2025.

Put the refresh on the calendar: when BLS and NALP publish new figures, re-pull your state's line and re-date your band the same day.

Watch for mid-cycle moves too.

Legal press reported Milbank's June 2, 2026 memo setting a new associate scale effective July 1, 2026 — $235,000 for the Class of 2026/2025 up to $455,000 for the Class of 2018 — a raise of $10,000 for the first four class years and $20,000 for fifth through eighth years, from a scale that had run $225,000 to $435,000.

That is the large-firm market scale, not an employment-attorney number; its lesson is direction and speed, not the dollars — posted market pay can move mid-year.

The third trigger is competitive: pay-transparency statutes put rival ranges in postings where you can read them, so when a competing firm's posted range for an employment attorney moves, recheck yours — the employment attorney jobs posted here are one place to look.

When you do raise, tell the employee which benchmark the number came from: a defensible number is easier to pay for.

Employer information, not legal advice. The salary-history, posting-range, stay-or-pay and overtime rules named on this page are statutes and regulations that change; confirm the current rules for your state with your employment counsel and your state labor agency.