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

An immigration posting has five working parts: the caseload, 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 practice mix, the seniority, where to source candidates — our guide to how to hire an immigration attorney covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

Core duties.

Write the caseload a candidate can picture, not adjectives: the practice mix, the forums the work sits in, how far into each matter the hire carries it, and who they answer to.

The mixes are different jobs — family-based petitions and naturalization, employment- and business-based sponsorship, humanitarian filings, and removal defense in immigration court — so name the one your docket actually runs.

If the attorney will direct paralegals or legal assistants, say so in the posting too, because 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:

• Owning [practice mix] matters end to end — intake, strategy, filings and the evidence behind them
• Preparing and filing petitions, applications and the supporting evidence packages [family-based, employment-based, humanitarian — name yours]
• Representing clients at interviews and, where your mix includes it, in immigration court
• Drafting responses to requests for evidence and keeping parallel deadlines across the docket
• Counseling clients on options, timelines and what to expect at each step
• Supervising the paralegals and legal assistants who support the caseload
• Communicating with clients in [languages the caseload runs on] as well as English
• [Carrying a caseload target or after-hours deadline coverage — state it as the firm's own number]

One boundary shapes the duties block: the work has to sit inside the forums and jurisdictions where the hire is authorized to practice.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(a) bars a lawyer from practicing law in a jurisdiction in violation of its regulation of the profession, or assisting another in doing so — and the "assist" clause is the firm's exposure, not just the lawyer's.

The federal side of this practice carries its own definition of who counts as an attorney, covered in the qualifications block below; state-law advice is still state-licensed work.

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 your office sits and where state-law questions land.

Then verify it at the source: 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.

Immigration adds a federal layer, and it is the fact most likely to change how you write the requirement.

The federal immigration regulations (8 CFR 1.2) define an "attorney" as a member in good standing of the bar of the highest court of any U.S. state, territory or D.C. — so for the federal side of the practice, before DHS and EOIR's forums, a license from any one state meets the federal definition.

Read that for what it covers and nothing more: it does not make your hire a licensed lawyer everywhere, and advice on one state's law still takes a license in that state.

How far an any-state hire reaches in your office — office presence, titles, out-of-state and remote arrangements — is the licensing discussion in our how-to-hire guide above, and your state bar's ethics counsel is the one who signs off on the arrangement.

Decide what you will accept and write exactly that.

"Admitted anywhere" or "immigration experience required" pulls applications you cannot use.

If you would consider a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction, clear the arrangement with your state bar's ethics counsel and your state's admitting authority before you write the 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 — 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)).

Language belongs on the required list only when the caseload needs it: if your clients speak [language], fluency is a job requirement you can test in the interview rather than a line on a resume to take on faith.

The candidate-side view of the practice — training, licensing path, the day itself — is in our immigration attorney career guide.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — case management, deadline and calendaring tools, e-filing, legal research, and whatever you use for interpreter and translation workflows — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

The non-software skills that matter in this practice are specific: running many parallel matters without missing a filing date, evidence assembly tight enough to survive a request for evidence, client communication across language barriers 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 organizational skills."

Pay range and benefits.

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

The broadest figure in our research is the federal wage survey: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, lawyers (SOC 23-1011) had a national 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.

Our sources carry no immigration-only line inside the survey — it prices the whole lawyers series — and OEWS excludes self-employed lawyers, so it does not measure what firm owners take home.

State figures are on our immigration 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), and NALP's salary curve for the Class of 2025 is bimodal: 50.0% of the 22,715 reported full-time starting salaries fell between $60,000 and $100,000, while a second peak at the $225,000 mark on the distribution accounted for 21.5% — the right-hand peak of that distribution, not a pay level for your hire.

NALP's associate-survey sample is large-firm-heavy, so treat those figures as context for where the market sits; an immigration hire is priced against the all-lawyers figures, at the point where the role you wrote actually sits.

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.

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

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 volume expectations, including after-hours deadline coverage and any billable or caseload 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 its professional exemption covers an attorney licensed by the State of California and primarily engaged in the practice of law 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.

How California classifies an immigration hire admitted only in another state was not something our research confirmed.

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 firm the hire is the immigration practice, so write the breadth in honestly: the matters they will own from intake to resolution, 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 filings and who they escalate to.

And post the range you actually budgeted rather than one copied from a big-firm survey; the NALP figures above skew large-firm and do not describe two-to-ten lawyer firms well, so a range you can stand behind saves you from renegotiating with the candidate you wanted.

Adapting for a practice mix.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the caseload you actually run.

A family-based and naturalization practice hires for volume: many parallel matters, hard filing dates, constant client contact.

A business-immigration hire lives in employer sponsorship — petition strategy, position documentation, and communication with an employer's human-resources contact as well as the client.

A removal-defense hire is a court litigator: hearings before an immigration judge, relief applications, and a record built for decision.

Let the requirements block follow the same logic — ask for experience with the kind of matters your firm takes, not "immigration experience" in the abstract.

Adapting for language coverage.

If your client base includes languages your team does not cover, write the fluency line as a requirement tied to the work — client interviews and filings in [language] — and plan to test it in the interview rather than take the resume line on faith.

What you are hiring is the ability to run a client conversation without a translator in the room, and that is checkable in a few minutes of conversation.

Adapting for hybrid or remote days.

The paperwork side of an immigration caseload travels, 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.

Five wordings sink otherwise good immigration postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Bar-admission wording that promises more than the hire may do.

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)) — 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.

The federal any-state definition covers the federal side of the practice only, so a posting line that reads as licensed-in-your-state for a hire who is not is the trap.

Write the admission requirement as the state where the office sits, treat any any-state or out-of-state line as a confirm-with-your-ethics-counsel question before it goes up, and treat a role for an unadmitted graduate the same way — what your state lets an unadmitted graduate do was not something our research confirmed.

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.

Immigration postings have their own way of drifting into this: phrasing that ties the job to where applicants or their families are from, rather than to the languages and the caseload the work needs.

Write about the work.

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; the EEOC publishes separate guidance pages on citizenship and other pre-employment inquiries, worth reading before you build the application form.

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.

An immigration 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.

"Immigration attorney wanted," no practice mix, no forums, 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 practice mix, the forums the work sits in, the stage a hire owns, the language coverage you need, and a range you believe.

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 immigration 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, ethics rules and classification 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.