Which law firm employees are exempt from overtime?

The Fair Labor Standards Act is the federal law behind overtime pay, and the exemption tests sit in the Department of Labor's regulations.

The exemptions a law firm will actually reach for — executive, administrative and professional — each require two things to be true at once: the role's duties must fit the exemption, and the pay must meet the salary test.

"Job titles do not determine exemption status," as the Department of Labor's Fact Sheet 17D puts it, so what a role is called on the org chart settles nothing on its own.

The salary test has one number behind it.

29 CFR 541.600 sets the standard salary level for all three of those exemptions: an employee must be compensated on a salary basis at a rate of "not less than $684 per week" — $1,368 biweekly, $1,482 semimonthly, $2,964 monthly.

As of October 2, 2026, the Department of Labor's salary-levels page lists that same level as $684 per week, equivalent to $35,568 a year, alongside a highly compensated employee total of $107,432 a year.

If your classification worksheet still carries the 2024 rule's higher figures — $844 per week, then $1,128 per week — it is out of date: those levels are not in force, the rule that set them was vacated by a federal court in November 2024, and the salary-levels page listed $684 per week as the standard level as of October 2, 2026.

The salary level is a threshold an exemption must clear, not a switch that creates one.

A role paid above $684 a week is exempt only if its duties also meet the regulation — and the same applies at the top of the pay scale: the highly compensated employee total of $107,432 a year includes at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis, and even pay at that level does not remove the duties requirement.

Payroll facts never decide a classification by themselves.

One carve-out frames everything else on this page.

Under 29 CFR 541.304, an employee holding a valid license to practice law who is actually engaged in the practice is an exempt professional — and the salary requirements do not apply.

Fact Sheet 17D confirms it: the salary and salary-basis requirements do not apply to bona fide practitioners of law.

The provision is narrower than it looks, though.

Because it covers only a holder of a valid license who is actually practicing, a law graduate awaiting bar results or an unlicensed law clerk does not fit it — that person must meet another exemption's salary and duties tests or be paid overtime.

Here is the role-by-role view the rest of this page works through, for everyone a firm hires besides its lawyers:

Paralegals and legal assistants — generally non-exempt.

The learned-professional regulation says an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard entry requirement for the field, which is why the exemption generally fails.

Legal secretaries — run the tests; no verified provision names the role.

The learned-professional provision names paralegals and legal assistants, and no provision our research verified attaches to a secretarial title.

Actual duties and salary decide.

Office managers and firm administrators — the administrative route is possible, and unverified here.

The salary test is $684 a week on a salary basis; the administrative duties test was not among the sources this page verified.

Billing staff — run the tests.

No provision our research verified names billing work, so the duties-and-salary pair decides.

IT and eDiscovery staff — a computer-employee route exists.

Hourly pay of not less than $27.63 an hour can meet the compensation test, but the duties test for computer employees was not covered by this page's sources.

Intake staff and receptionists — run the tests.

No provision our research verified names intake or front-desk work.

The regulation answers this one almost directly.

29 CFR 541.301(e)(7), the learned-professional exemption's provision for the field, states that paralegals and legal assistants "generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals" — and gives the reason: "an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for entry into the field."

The reason is stated at the field level in the regulation itself — how specialized one firm's paralegal work happens to be is not the test it sets.

The regulation's word is "generally," which is why the carve-out and the audit habit matter.

The same provision allows the learned-professional exemption for a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job — the regulation's own example is an engineer hired as a paralegal to work on product-liability or patent matters.

Where that carve-out fits, how the administrative route fares for a paralegal, and how to pay a salaried non-exempt paralegal correctly are the deep dive: our guide to paralegal overtime rules works through them.

Legal secretaries sit next to paralegals, not inside their provision.

The learned-professional regulation names paralegals and legal assistants; it does not name secretaries, and no provision our research verified attaches to secretarial work.

That absence is not a classification in either direction — the analysis still runs on what the person actually does and what they are paid, and the title adds nothing to it.

Where a "legal secretary" role's actual duties raise an administrative-exemption claim, that claim runs through the administrative analysis the next section covers — with the same caution attached.

Start with what is verifiable.

The administrative exemption is one of the three white-collar routes that share the standard salary level, so an office-manager exemption claim begins with pay: the person must be compensated on a salary basis at not less than $684 per week, or one of the period equivalents above.

Below that line the route ends before the duties are even considered.

And the label does no work — "Office Manager" and "Firm Administrator" are job titles, and job titles do not determine exemption status.

When the administrative exemption actually fits is the part this page cannot settle.

The duties test that decides it sits in the Department of Labor's regulations, and our research for this page verified the salary level, the title rule and the paralegal provision — not the administrative duties criteria, and not how they apply to law-firm office managers specifically.

The paralegal provision's non-exempt answer does not decide this question either way; it is a different test about a different route.

So treat "when does it fit" as a role-by-role question: put the position's real duties against the regulation's administrative test, with employment counsel, before classifying anyone exempt on the strength of the title.

What a firm can do without the unverified text is structure the decision.

Write down the actual duties before forming an exemption claim — those duties, not the job title, are what the regulation's administrative test gets applied to.

Screen the pay against $684 a week first, because a below-level salary ends the administrative and executive routes on its own.

Then treat the surviving claim as a question for counsel rather than a default — the same posture this page takes on the computer-employee route below.

Billing roles have no shortcut this page can verify.

The provisions our research did verify name other work: 29 CFR 541.301(e)(7) names paralegals and legal assistants, and 29 CFR 541.304 names holders of a valid law license actually practicing.

Neither names billing work, so a billing specialist's classification comes out of the same duties-and-salary pair as everyone else's — and because the administrative and computer-employee duties tests were not among this page's sources, any exemption claim on those routes goes to the regulation's text or employment counsel.

Screen the pay against the $684-a-week salary level first if an exemption is on the table, then test the actual duties, and let neither the software the role uses nor the seniority in its title do the deciding.

Some IT and eDiscovery roles can fall under a distinct pay rule.

The regulations give computer employees a second way to meet the compensation test: instead of a salary of at least $684 a week, the requirement can be met by hourly pay at a rate of "not less than $27.63 an hour."

That figure answers the compensation question only.

The regulations also apply a duties test to computer employees, and that duties list was not part of this page's research — so the hourly rate alone classifies nobody.

An eDiscovery reviewer or firm IT role is exempt only if the duties fit too, which is a question to take to the regulation's text or to employment counsel rather than to assume from the rate on the paycheck.

Intake specialists and receptionists get the shortest answer on this page because the sources give the shortest one: the provisions our research verified name other work — paralegals and legal assistants (29 CFR 541.301(e)(7)) and holders of a valid law license actually practicing (29 CFR 541.304) — not intake or front-desk work, and the administrative and computer-employee duties tests were not among this page's sources.

The classification still runs on actual duties and salary, and this page's working assumption is that where no exemption's tests are met, the FLSA's overtime rules reach the role.

For these roles, nothing in the sources we verified displaces that assumption.

Two practical notes belong here.

First, the role's duties are whatever the person really does — an intake role that grows into managing the intake team is a different classification question than the one it was hired into, and the worksheet should track the change.

Second, whether the front desk is an employee at all is its own decision: our comparison of legal answering services versus a receptionist hire covers that choice.

The audit is duties-first.

List each role by what the person actually does — not by the title on the job posting, because titles determine nothing.

Screen the salary test second: a role not compensated on a salary basis of at least $684 per week cannot meet the salary test the executive, administrative and professional exemptions share — the federal practicing-lawyer provision is the one exception, with no federal salary test at all (29 CFR 541.304).

Then test each exemption claim against the duties it depends on, and hold the two claims this page could not verify — the administrative test for office managers and the computer-employee duties test — for the regulation's text or employment counsel.

Date-stamp the worksheet.

The figures this page uses are current as of October 2, 2026, and they change: a worksheet still carrying $844 or $1,128 a week is applying the vacated 2024 rule.

Multi-state firms owe the state check too — California, New York, Washington and Colorado set salary thresholds above the federal level, so an exemption that clears $684 a week can still fail in those states.

California also has no no-salary carve-out for lawyers: a licensed attorney practicing law there is exempt only if they also earn a salary of at least two times the state minimum wage.

Check the current figures with your state labor agency before relying on the federal level.

Put the borderline calls in front of employment counsel before the offer goes out — office-manager claims, computer-employee claims, and any paralegal role resting on an advanced degree from another field.

Classification is one piece of the hiring picture; our hub on hiring for your law firm covers the rest — roles, rules, pay and onboarding.

Employer information, not legal advice. Salary levels and exemption rules change; confirm your classifications with employment counsel and your state labor agency, and check the Department of Labor's current salary-levels page before you rely on the figures here.