How much should a law firm pay an immigration attorney?

Our research holds no immigration-specific wage series from BLS: its lawyer occupation (SOC 23-1011) covers the profession as a whole, so every number in this section is that whole-profession data used as a proxy, not an immigration-specific figure.

In the OEWS May 2025 release, lawyers had a national median annual wage of $159,670, with the 10th percentile at $78,360 and the 90th percentile at $351,600.

Read the top of that range as approximate: BLS flags lawyer wage values at or above $239,200 with a footnote in its published tables.

Two refinements matter for a firm doing the hiring.

First, the median for lawyers in the legal services industry — law firms, NAICS 5411 — was $157,870 in May 2025, so the industry you are hiring in pays near the all-lawyer median.

Second, OEWS excludes self-employed workers, so it does not measure what a solo practitioner or equity partner earns; if you are pricing a seat against ownership rather than salary, this series is the wrong instrument.

The spread by state is wide.

In May 2025, New York had the highest lawyer median wage ($207,860), followed by DC ($195,190) and California ($195,080); Mississippi was lowest ($91,690).

Those are all-lawyers medians too, but they set the local price level your offer competes in.

The state-by-state figures sit on our immigration attorney salary data page, which carries the same BLS series by jurisdiction.

Treat all of it as floor-setting, not the answer: these are medians across every practice setting, not offers for your seat.

The sharper benchmark is what firms like yours are posting — and in several states the range is public whether or not you volunteer it (the offer section covers where).

Our guide to benchmarking law firm pay turns those postings into a number you can defend.

Our research holds no dataset that splits attorney pay by practice area, so the honest answer on experience and practice mix comes from the datasets that do document the rest of the curve: BLS's all-lawyers series above, and NALP's associate surveys, which document law-firm associate base salaries by firm size and market.

Neither holds an immigration-specific figure.

Class year and firm size.

NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey recorded 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.

Among firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, the most common first-year salary was $150,000 or less, reported by 44% of offices.

Geography moves it too: outside NALP's 19 major-market cities, median first-year associate salaries in 2025 were $181,900 in the West, $170,000 in the Northeast, and $160,000 in the South and Midwest.

Two markets, not one.

NALP's Class of 2025 salary curve is bimodal: reported salaries of $60,000–$100,000 made up 50.0% of the 22,715 full-time salaries in the dataset, while $225,000 accounted for 21.5%.

Where your offer lands on that two-peaked map is a function of what the seat produces and who else is bidding.

At the top end, the associate base-salary scale Milbank announced on June 2, 2026 — a figure our research holds through legal-press reporting of the firm memo, not a primary dataset — took effect July 1, 2026 and starts at $235,000 for first-year associates.

If you recruit against large-firm immigration groups in major markets and the reported scale holds, that is the base you are bidding against before any bonus.

The business–humanitarian question.

Does a business-immigration seat pay differently from a humanitarian or removal-defense one?

Our research holds no verified figure for that gap, and the BLS data we hold has no practice-area cut that could produce one.

Price it from your own fee base instead: the seat is worth what the work you will put on it bills, and the posting benchmark above will show which side of your local market your client mix puts you on.

Start from classification, because it decides what a "salary" has to clear.

Under the federal regulation at 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 that apply to other white-collar exemptions do not apply to that lawyer — the Department of Labor's Fact Sheet 17D says the same for bona fide practitioners of law.

Federal law therefore imposes no minimum salary on a barred, practicing immigration attorney: how you split fixed and variable pay is a business decision made inside the wage laws, not a classification constraint.

The license condition has teeth in one case worth flagging: a law-school graduate who has not been admitted yet is not covered by 541.304, and must meet another exemption's salary and duties tests or be paid overtime.

For the professional exemptions, the federal standard salary level was $684 per week ($35,568 a year) on DOL's salary-levels page as of October 2026, and a salary at that level still needs the exemption's duties test behind it.

If the seat you are pricing is open to pending bar applicants, structure their pay as if the lawyer exemption did not exist until admission.

California closes the federal gap on its own.

There, a licensed attorney practicing law is an exempt professional only if they also earn a 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 an hour, effective January 1, 2026.

Unlike federal law, California has no no-salary carve-out for lawyers, so a low-base, high-bonus structure has to clear that floor in fixed pay.

Inside those constraints, the menu is: a straight salary; a salary with a production bonus tied to defined output; or a salary with origination credit where the firm tracks client development.

Whatever the variable layer rewards — filings completed, cases approved, matters carried — write the definition into the offer so the number is auditable on both sides.

How exempt and non-exempt classification works across law-firm roles, including the staff whose overtime rules differ from a lawyer's, is in our guide to exempt vs. non-exempt law firm staff.

Structure is also where the practice-mix question from the last section becomes a decision.

The more of your fee base that moves case by case, the more of the package can safely sit in the variable layer; the steadier the revenue, the more belongs in fixed salary.

Match the split to your own books — the offer section below picks up what you must disclose, and when.

We will not invent a ranking: our research holds no survey of what immigration-attorney candidates weight most in a package.

What is verifiable is that several states have turned benefits disclosure from a sweetener into a posting requirement — and that naming benefits concretely is the cheapest upgrade a posting can buy.

Where disclosure is required: Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees to disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each posting, in effect since January 1, 2023; Illinois requires employers with 15 or more employees to include the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; Minnesota requires employers with 30 or more employees to list the starting salary range and a general description of benefits, and ranges there may not be open-ended; Connecticut's law, effective October 1, 2026, requires the wage or wage range and a general description of benefits in every job advertisement.

So decide the package deliberately and state what is true for this seat: health coverage and whether it extends to family; retirement plan and any match; bar dues, CLE support and malpractice coverage; caseload and mentorship structure; where the role sits on remote and hybrid work.

A posting that says what the firm actually offers survives both a strong candidate's scrutiny and the disclosure laws above; a vague "competitive benefits" survives neither.

Describe what applies to the role you are posting, and confirm the posting requirements for your state with your state labor agency.

Set the number from the benchmarks, then run the conversation by the rules that govern it.

In the four states below, the candidate's salary history is off the table:

• California. Labor Code 432.3 bars every employer — 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. The same statute lets you ask about salary expectations for the position, and lets you consider salary history the applicant volunteers without prompting. On reasonable request, you must provide the position's pay scale — a duty that applies at any employer size, unlike the posting duty, which starts at 15 employees.
• 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, or seeking it from a current or former employer. The one window the law opens: when an offer with compensation is made, if the applicant responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number, you may then confirm that history.
• Illinois. 820 ILCS 112 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. G.L. c.149 §105A bars seeking a prospective employee's wage or salary history from the candidate or from a current or former employer; it may be confirmed only after the candidate volunteers it or after an offer with compensation has been made.

Connecticut bars asking about a prospective employee's wage and salary history unless the applicant volunteers it; Virginia's 2026 law bans seeking salary history alongside its posting requirements; and Nevada's bans seeking it while requiring the wage or salary range to be given to an applicant who has completed an interview.

This is not the full map, and it is not a count: many cities and states have their own salary-history and posting rules, and our research read only the jurisdictions named here.

Build the interviewer script for the jurisdictions you hire in, and confirm it with employment counsel before the first screen.

The play inside those rules: anchor the conversation on your number and the role, not on the candidate's past.

State the range plainly — where posting laws require it, it is public anyway.

California requires the pay scale in postings at 15 or more employees, New York requires compensation ranges for advertised jobs at four or more employees, New York City has required a good-faith range in job advertisements since November 1, 2022, and Colorado requires compensation disclosure in all job postings.

Define any bonus in writing, and price the whole package against the benchmark you set before the first interview.

The full process — sourcing, screening, conflicts — is in our guide to how to hire an immigration attorney.

Our research holds no published review cadence for attorney pay, so anchor the review to the events that move the number:

• Each recruiting cycle. Re-run the posting benchmark before you post the next immigration seat, not after — the benchmarking law firm pay guide is the method.
• Market-scale moves. When the large-firm scale moves — legal-press reporting carried a reset effective July 1, 2026 — a lateral number set before the move ages quickly.
• Law changes. Connecticut's posting-range law took effect October 1, 2026, and Virginia added its disclosure and salary-history rules through 2026 legislation. New requirements change what the posting must carry, and sometimes what the seat must cost.
• Stale-range risk. California defines the pay scale as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range you reasonably expect to pay on hire, and its penalties run $100 to $10,000 per violation; Virginia's penalties for violating its disclosure and salary-history rules run up to $1,000 for a first violation and $5,000 for subsequent ones.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. The wage figures come from BLS's OEWS May 2025 release and NALP's 2025 survey, and the disclosure, salary-history and overtime rules come from the statutes and regulations named; they change, and states adopt their own versions. Confirm your pay structure with employment counsel and, for posting requirements, your state labor agency.