How much should a law firm pay an immigration paralegal?

Start with the honest label on the data.

Our sources carry no federal wage series for the immigration specialty: the Bureau of Labor Statistics combines paralegals and legal assistants into a single occupation — paralegals and legal assistants, SOC 23-2011 — so its survey cannot show whether paralegals out-earn legal assistants, let alone isolate immigration work.

That combined occupation is the broader-category proxy every public number below comes from.

In the May 2025 national release, that occupation had a median annual wage of $62,890 ($30.24 per hour), with the 10th percentile at $44,740 and the 90th percentile at $101,500.

Read the percentiles carefully: they are not an experience ladder, and the 10th percentile is not entry-level pay — it is simply the wage below which one worker in ten falls.

Setting moves the median.

Within the legal services industry — the industry your firm sits in — paralegals and legal assistants had a median of $61,770.

But the occupation works in more settings than firms, and the median moves with the setting: in the same release it was $94,570 in corporate offices (the management-of-companies sector) and $81,470 in the federal executive branch.

Price a firm offer knowing the hire's alternatives may sit outside firm practice.

Location moves it further.

Among states in the same release, DC had the highest paralegal and legal assistant median at $89,750, followed by Washington at $79,400 and Colorado at $78,190, while Mississippi was lowest at $46,180.

The full state-by-state tables sit on our immigration paralegal salary data page.

One more input shapes the range before you ever interview: the posting itself.

More than a dozen states plus DC require a pay range in job postings — California's rule covers employers with 15 or more employees, and New York Labor Law 194-b applies to businesses with four or more.

In California the range you post is defined as a good-faith estimate of what you reasonably expect to pay on hire, not an aspirational spread, and Maryland requires the range be set in good faith.

To pressure-test your number against what competing firms advertise, the live immigration paralegal jobs on this board show the role scope and pay framing you are bidding against.

Start with what our sources do not have.

Our sources carry no salary ladder for paralegal seniority, no sourced immigration-practice premium and no firm-size table for staff roles — the percentile columns in the first section are a spread across the whole occupation, not steps on a career path.

The defensible budget prices scope, not years.

Scope for this role runs wider than the title suggests.

A junior hire assembles forms and evidence under close review; a senior one carries the caseload under attorney review — agency and consular filings, requests for evidence, FOIA requests, immigration-court calendaring, and coordination of certified translations.

Write the budget for the scope the hire must carry on day one rather than for the junior half of it; if one person must span both ends, that is a different number.

Language skills are the immigration-specific variable.

If the role requires working a caseload in a second language — client interviews, document review, interpreter coordination — that requirement belongs in the posting and in the band.

Our sources carry no sourced percentage for a language premium, so do not invent one: build the requirement into the base range you post, and compete on the specificity of the role rather than on an unsourced bump.

Firm size: resist importing an attorney salary ladder into this budget.

Those scales price attorney roles; the anchors that hold for this hire are the occupation figures above plus the postings you actually compete with — refreshed on the cadence in the last section below.

Our guide to benchmarking law firm pay walks the comparison.

Two bodies of law decide the structure: wage-and-hour law sets the base, and the ethics rules set what any variable piece may key to.

The base.

Under the DOL's regulations, paralegals and legal assistants generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals, because an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for the field (29 CFR 541.301(e)(7)).

The narrow exception runs the other way: a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job can meet the exemption — the DOL's own example is an engineer hired as a paralegal for product-liability or patent matters.

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

The federal salary level for the white-collar exemptions is $684 per week, $35,568 a year, as enforced by DOL as of October 2026.

Note the limit of that regulation: 541.301(e)(7) settles the learned-professional test — the administrative exemption is a separate test, and the states add their own — so read the full analysis in our guide to overtime rules before you set the base.

For a role that is generally non-exempt, an hourly base is the structure the overtime math runs on most directly.

The variable piece.

ABA Model Rule 5.4(a) bars a lawyer or law firm from sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer, subject to listed exceptions.

One of them, Rule 5.4(a)(3), lets a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan even if the plan is based in whole or in part on profit-sharing.

That pair is the shape the model text accommodates: a base wage, plus a bonus or plan keyed to overall firm results rather than to any case.

The immigration-specific trap is the outcome-linked bonus — a payment per petition approved, per case granted, or per client signed.

That keys pay to individual case outcomes, which is the structure to put in front of your state bar's ethics counsel before you promise it; the Model Rules are models, and your state adopts its own version.

The language differential.

If you pay one, build it into the base range rather than around it.

In California the posted pay scale is defined as a good-faith estimate of what you reasonably expect to pay on hire — so there, a differential that sits outside the posted band turns a recruiting tool into a compliance problem, and anywhere else it undercuts the range you advertised.

Our sources carry no benchmark for what such a differential should be — set it from your own market evidence and document the reasoning.

Start with what the research cannot tell you.

Our sources carry no ranked survey of what immigration paralegal candidates value most in a benefits package — treat any "perks that matter most" list, including instinct, as a guess, and decide the package deliberately instead.

What the sources do establish is that the package is no longer private.

Several posting laws require a general description of benefits alongside the pay range — Washington, Illinois and Minnesota name benefits in their posting requirements, Connecticut's rule took effect October 1, 2026, and Maryland requires a good-faith wage range with a benefits description.

In those states candidates will see your package in the ad before they ever hear from you, so write it before you post rather than after the first candidate asks.

The items worth deciding explicitly, none of which need a survey to justify: health coverage and its cost share; a retirement plan the paralegal is genuinely included in — Model Rule 5.4(a)(3) expressly permits profit-sharing-based plans to include nonlawyer employees, so the vehicle that carries a results-based bonus can also be the one the hire saves in; paid time off; schedule and remote flexibility around court calendaring; and development support such as association dues and continuing education for credentialed staff.

For a specialty role where language skills can be the scarce input, staffing levels that keep caseloads survivable are part of the compensation decision too.

The design work is the same at any firm size: our guide to benefits small firms offer covers the package decisions a firm without an HR department faces.

Anchor to the band, not to the candidate's past pay.

In the states our research covered most closely, the law takes the old anchor off the table.

California Labor Code 432.3 bars all employers — any size — from seeking an applicant's salary history, including compensation and benefits, and from relying on it when deciding whether to hire or what to pay.

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 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.

This is not a complete list of salary-history states — many cities and other states have their own rules, and our research did not count them — so confirm the rules where your firm hires with your state labor agency.

The lawful substitutes are specific.

California expressly allows asking an applicant about their salary expectation for the position, and if the candidate volunteers salary history without prompting, you may consider it.

California employers must also give an applicant the position's pay scale on reasonable request, regardless of employer size.

New York allows confirming salary history only in one window: after a compensation offer is made, if the candidate responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number.

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

Let the posted range do the early negotiating.

Where posting rules apply, the range is the first offer the candidate sees.

In California the statute defines the posted pay scale as a good-faith estimate of what you reasonably expect to pay on hire, and penalties run $100 to $10,000 per violation.

A band whose top you would not actually pay is a liability, not a lure.

If you use a signing bonus, read California first.

For contracts entered on or after January 1, 2026, California's stay-or-pay law (Business and Professions Code 16608) makes it unlawful to require a worker to pay a penalty, fee or cost — including a quit fee or replacement-hire fee — if employment ends.

A signing-bonus repayment clause survives only if it meets every condition in section 16608(b)(2)(D): a separate agreement; notice that the worker may consult a lawyer and at least five business days to do it; interest-free repayment prorated over a retention period of no more than two years; the option to defer the bonus to the end of that period instead; and repayment 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 outside California were not covered by our research — put any repayment term in front of employment counsel before you use it in another state.

Paper the offer.

State the base and whether it is hourly or salary, how overtime is handled, any bonus formula and the period it computes over, the benefits you decided above, and the first review date — in the offer letter, not in conversation.

And keep the pre-offer checks moving in parallel: the sequence, from credential verification to the supervision mapping, is the one in our guide to how to hire an immigration paralegal.

Our research found no sourced norm for how often firms should revisit staff pay — set the cadence yourself and put the first review date in the offer, rather than letting a resignation schedule the review for you.

Refresh the inputs on that cadence.

The May 2025 release is the one our figures come from — check for a newer one before each review and re-anchor the band to your state's numbers.

Reread your posted range the same way: it should remain a range you would actually pay, and in California the statute requires a good-faith estimate of what you reasonably expect to pay on hire — so a band the firm has quietly outgrown is a recruiting problem anywhere and a compliance problem there, and the California penalties above attach to violations, not to intentions.

And reread the bonus formula against the ethics rules whenever you change it; the confirmation that matters is your state bar's ethics counsel's, not precedent at your own firm.

Employer information, not legal advice. The wage-and-hour rules described here are enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor and state labor agencies, the posting and salary-history rules by the states named, and the ethics rules are adopted state by state from the ABA's model — figures are current as of October 2026. Confirm what applies to your firm with your state labor agency, employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel before you act on it.