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

A litigation attorney posting has five working parts: the duties the hire will actually own, the credential you will verify, the skills and systems, the pay and benefits, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

The decisions before the posting — the caseload you need covered, where to source candidates, how to screen — are covered in our guide to how to hire a litigation attorney; this page is about writing it, and the general mechanics are in writing a law firm job posting.

Core duties.

Write the duties as the work your docket produces, not as adjectives.

A general or commercial litigation associate moves a case from intake through resolution, so a posting that says what happens at each stage filters better than one that says "handle all aspects of litigation."

Duties worth a line:

• Assess new matters: facts, claims and defenses, exposure, and a recommended path
• Draft pleadings — complaints, answers, counterclaims and cross-claims
• Brief and argue motions — to dismiss, for summary judgment, and the discovery motions in between
• Run written discovery: requests, responses, objections and privilege review
• Take and defend depositions [name the supervision level — solo, with the practice lead, or second chair]
• Coordinate e-discovery and document review with [your paralegals / litigation support team]
• Retain and manage experts on [liability / damages / industry] reports and testimony
• Prepare trial materials — exhibit lists, witness outlines, motions in limine — and second-chair at trial
• [First-chair hearings or trials — delete if you do not mean it]
• Negotiate settlements and prepare mediation statements
• Keep deadlines current in the firm's docketing calendar and report case status to clients

One boundary shapes the duties block: the work has to sit inside the credentials the hire actually holds.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(a) — a model rule that states adopt in their own versions — 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.

What counts as practicing law in a jurisdiction is that jurisdiction's own regulation of the profession, and a posting whose duties presume a court calendar the hire cannot yet cover sets both of you up to miss the work you described.

Write the duties to match what the hire will be credentialed to do on day one, and treat anything beyond that as a training plan you name, not a duty you imply.

Qualifications and bar admission.

The credential line does the heavy lifting in this block, because it is the one you can and should verify.

Write it as "[State] bar admission in good standing" — the state where the disputes will be litigated, not a generic "licensed attorney."

Then verify it: 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.

A resume line is not a license check; run it before you rely on the credential and again before the start date.

If you would consider a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction, say what you would accept.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(c) allows a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction, and not suspended or disbarred, to provide legal services on a temporary basis in four situations — one of them in association with a locally admitted lawyer who actively participates in the matter.

If you would consider a law school graduate who is not yet admitted, confirm what your state allows before you write the line: the paths and their conditions are state-specific, and our research did not verify state practice-pending-admission or graduate-practice rules — check with your state's admitting authority.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(b)(2) bars a lawyer who is not admitted in a jurisdiction from holding out or representing that they are admitted to practice law there, which is why the credential line should never blur.

The candidate-side view of the practice is in our litigation attorney career guide.

Skills and software.

Litigation is deadline work, so name the systems your firm actually runs and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

The stack is: [your docketing system] — answer dates, discovery cutoffs, statute-of-limitation and filing deadlines, where a miss is the expensive kind — plus your e-discovery or document review platform, your legal research service, your courts' e-filing systems, and time-and-billing.

The judgment skills matter as much as the tools: brief writing that survives a skeptical reader, depositions that build a record instead of just filling one, discovery objections that hold up, candid case-valuation advice a client can budget against, and delegation that keeps a litigation paralegal useful without supplanting your judgment.

Ask for a writing sample — a brief or motion the candidate drafted — and read it the same way for every applicant.

A posting that names its real stack and its real expectations filters better than one that lists "strong legal skills."

Pay range and benefits.

Anchor the range in your market and your budget, then adjust for the caseload you are handing over — a hire who first-chairs matters and a hire who supports a practice lead are different requisitions even inside one firm.

The national benchmark comes with a scope caveat: our sources carry no litigation-specific wage series — the closest BLS line is its lawyers series — so read the figures below as a proxy for the profession, not a litigation pay scale.

In the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, lawyers (SOC 23-1011) had a 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 — and BLS footnotes lawyer wage values of $239,200 and above, so read the top of the spread as approximate.

In the same release, lawyers in the Legal Services industry (law firms, NAICS 5411) had a median annual wage of $157,870.

State figures are on our litigation 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, and $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers — 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).

NALP's Class of 2025 salary curve — which covers all reported full-time jobs, not just law firms — is bimodal: 50.0% of the 22,715 reported full-time starting salaries fell between $60,000 and $100,000, while $225,000 alone accounted for 21.5%.

The NALP associate survey is a large-firm-heavy sample and predates the 2026 raise, so treat these figures as context for where the market sits, not the number your firm must match.

Where our research verified a posting rule, the law puts the range in the posting itself:

• California — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in the job posting and give it to any third party that posts for them; "pay scale" means 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
• Washington — employers with 15 or more employees must disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each posting (in effect since January 1, 2023)
• Illinois — 15 or more employees; pay scale and benefits in the posting, a hyperlink allowed, for jobs performed at least partly in Illinois or reporting to an Illinois supervisor
• Minnesota — 30 or more employees in the state; the starting salary range and a general description of benefits, and ranges may not be open-ended
• Massachusetts — 25 or more employees in the state, effective October 29, 2025
• Maryland — the wage range and a general description of benefits in each public and internal job posting, set in good faith
• New York State — four or more employees; compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers
• New York City — a good-faith pay range in job advertisements for work performed in the city, since November 1, 2022
• Colorado — compensation and benefits disclosed in job postings
• Connecticut — the wage or wage range and a general description of benefits in every internal and public job advertisement, effective October 1, 2026
• Virginia — the wage, salary or range disclosed in each public and internal posting

Nevada runs the other way: its law requires giving the wage or salary range to an applicant who has completed an interview, not posting it upfront.

Two notes for a smaller firm.

California's posting duty starts at 15 employees, but any California employer, whatever its size, must give an applicant the position's pay scale on reasonable request.

And the list above is not the whole map — more than a dozen states plus DC have some form of pay-transparency posting rule, with different size thresholds and effective dates, so check with your state labor agency before you post.

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 hours expectation, including any billable target, as your firm's own number rather than leaving it to guesswork.

Hours interact with classification: under federal regulations (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.

California is the exception our research verified: a licensed attorney practicing law there is an exempt professional only if they also earn at least twice the state minimum wage — $70,304 a year at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90 per hour (IWC Wage Order 4).

Duties and salary decide classification, not the job title, so confirm the treatment of your specific role with employment counsel before you finalize the posting.

And if any part of compensation depends on case outcomes, confirm the structure with your state bar's ethics counsel before you promise it in a posting.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

In a small firm the hire may be the whole litigation practice, so write the breadth in honestly: the matters they will carry, the hearings they will cover, who reviews their filings, and what happens to the case when they are in trial.

A named supervisor matters more, not less — "reports to the managing attorney" tells a candidate who reviews their briefs and who they escalate to.

And post the pay range you actually budgeted rather than a number copied from a big-firm survey; a range you can stand behind saves you from renegotiating with the candidate you wanted.

If the seat sits next to a litigation paralegal you are also hiring for, our litigation paralegal job description template covers that posting separately.

Adapting for a practice area.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the work your docket produces.

An insurance defense hire lives in early case assessment, coverage, discovery volume and resolution — lead with those.

A plaintiff personal injury hire lives in intake, investigation, experts and trial preparation — lead with those, and say whether first-chair trial is in the seat.

A commercial litigation hire lives in contract disputes, business torts and motion practice across [state and federal] courts — name the courts, because federal practice and state practice run on different calendars and filing systems.

A generalist posting invites exactly that mismatch: an attorney who wants to try cases reads "litigation" as trial work, and one who does not reads it as motion practice, and neither reading is the job you meant.

Let the requirements block follow the same logic: ask for the experience your matters generate, not "litigation experience" in the abstract.

And if the role bleeds into adjacent work — transactions, advice-only counseling — say so; a hire brought on for one thing and handed another is your first-year retention problem.

Adapting for remote or hybrid.

Say where the attorney will practice law, not just where they will sit — and for a litigator, say where the hearings are.

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; 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.

For a litigation posting, that means the remote line should describe work for your firm's clients under the hire's existing license — drafting, discovery, preparation — and the arrangement is worth confirming with your state bar's ethics counsel before you publish it.

Five wordings sink otherwise good litigation postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Credential wording that overstates where the hire can practice.

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)) — so a title, bio or posting line that reads as licensed-in-your-state for a hire who is not is the trap, and it is the firm's problem as much as the lawyer's: Model Rule 5.5(a) bars practicing law in violation of a jurisdiction's regulation of the profession, or assisting another in doing so.

For a litigation seat the trap is sharper than elsewhere, because the duties you list name court work.

These are the ABA's model rules, not your state's law — your state bar's ethics counsel can confirm the wording that fits your jurisdiction.

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.

Write about the work, not the person: cut "young," "digital native" and "recent grad" from a litigation posting the same as any other.

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 discriminatory intent unless justified by a business purpose.

Keep the process accessible, too: an employer must provide an accommodation a disabled applicant needs in order 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) and Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A) bar employers from seeking an applicant's salary history; New York (Labor Law 194-a) and Illinois (820 ILCS 112) bar relying on it or requesting it as a condition of being interviewed or considered, and seeking it from a current or former employer — New York allows confirming prior pay only after an offer, and only if the applicant responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number.

Virginia's posting law bans seeking salary history too, and Connecticut bars asking unless the applicant volunteers it.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask an applicant about their salary expectation for the position.

Nevada's law bans seeking salary history as well, and other states and cities may restrict it too — check yours before the interview stage.

4. Conviction-history questions too early.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) and New York City's Fair Chance Act (most employers) bar asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment; Illinois has its own version, triggered at interview selection.

If your application form asks about criminal record, check your state and city law before you post — California, New York City and Illinois are the only fair-chance rules our research verified.

5. Vague scope.

"Litigation attorney wanted — join our growing practice," with no case types, no courts and no range: an umbrella posting invites applications from insurance defense associates, plaintiff trial lawyers and commercial litigators alike and saves you none of the sorting, and it reads as a firm that has not decided which of the three it needs.

The fix is the template above — name the case mix, the courts, the credentials you will verify, 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.

Verify bar admission through the state's licensing agency before an offer, not after, and collect the writing sample with the application so every candidate clears the same bar.

If you use a live drafting exercise, keep it short and set it on a mock file: the FLSA defines "employ" to include "to suffer or permit to work" (29 U.S.C.

203(g)), and a candidate doing real, usable work for the firm — a brief you actually file — may be an employee owed wages for it.

If the pay range or the duties change, update the posting rather than explaining the difference in interviews.

And before yours goes up, browse the live litigation 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, pay-transparency rules, bar-admission rules and ethics 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.