How much should a law firm pay a litigation attorney?

Begin with what the data can and cannot tell you: our research found no federal or industry series that isolates litigation pay.

BLS's OEWS program counts the entire lawyer occupation under one code (SOC 23-1011), across all industries, and excludes self-employed lawyers entirely — so everything below is a proxy you calibrate against your own market, not a litigation number.

Within that proxy, the May 2025 release put the median annual wage for lawyers at $159,670 nationally, with a 10th percentile of $78,360, across 754,500 wage-and-salary lawyers.

The 90th percentile, about $351,600, sits above the $239,200 line where BLS footnotes its published wage figures — a marker of how high the top decile runs rather than a precise ceiling.

The cut closest to your world is the industry series: lawyers in legal services (NAICS 5411 — law firms) had a median annual wage of $157,870 in May 2025.

That figure still spans every experience level in the industry, so treat it as context for the firm market rather than a target for the seat you are hiring.

Geography moves the number substantially.

Among states, BLS recorded the highest lawyer medians in New York ($207,860), DC ($195,190) and California ($195,080), and the lowest in Mississippi ($91,690).

The full state-by-state table lives on our litigation attorney salary data page.

Postings are the layer that actually describes your competition this month — what firms your size, in your city, are paying for the seat.

The litigation attorney jobs on this board are one place to read them, and note that in some states the posting itself must carry a range by law; the offer section below names the ones our research verified.

Experience is priced by class year in the big-firm associate market — a single ladder per class year, with no practice-area split in the sources we read.

The scale that took effect July 1, 2026 runs from $235,000 for the Classes of 2025 and 2026 to $455,000 for the Class of 2018, set by a Milbank memo dated June 2, 2026; the legal-press scorecard our research relies on for these figures — a secondary source, marked unverified in our notes — records McDermott, Quinn Emanuel, Sullivan & Cromwell, Katten, Norton Rose Fulbright and Troutman Pepper Locke among the firms that matched by late summer 2026.

Know where your offer sits relative to that ladder before you talk numbers with a lateral.

Practice area: our research found no published price list.

No primary source we read splits lawyer pay by practice area — BLS counts the whole occupation under one code — so a number a candidate quotes for trial work specifically is a claim to test in your market, not a figure to look up.

Firm size is the third axis, and the survey prices it directly.

NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey put the median first-year base at $200,000 as of January 1, 2025 — $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers — in a sample that skews toward large firms.

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

Outside NALP's 19 major-market cities, median first-year salaries ran $181,900 in the West, $170,000 in the Northeast, and $160,000 in the South and Midwest; in six metros — Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and the Washington, DC area — the median first-year salary was $225,000 as of the survey's January 1, 2025 reference date.

Classification comes first because it sets the floor.

Federal law treats an employee holding a valid law license who is actually engaged in practice as an exempt professional, and the federal salary requirements do not apply — so under federal law a licensed litigation attorney's pay is a market decision, not a compliance minimum.

State law can differ: in California, for one, the exemption also requires a monthly salary of at least two times the state minimum wage — $70,304 a year ($1,352 a week) at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90 an hour.

The full exemption map is in our guide to overtime rules.

Then price the billable model honestly.

Clio's 2025 Legal Trends Report — drawn from Clio users, mostly small firms rather than big firms — put average utilization at 38% (about 3 of 8 hours in a workday billable), realization at 88% (2.6 hours invoiced per 8-hour day) and collection at 93% (2.4 hours collected per day).

The hour worked, the hour invoiced and the dollar collected are three different quantities, and a salary is recovered from the last of them.

On the target itself, be careful what you copy.

At the firms that matched the 2026 scale, the legal-press scorecard reports billable expectations attached to the raise — Norton Rose Fulbright at 1,900 hours, McDermott and Quinn Emanuel at 2,000, Milbank with none listed — but our research found no sourced average figure for big-firm billable hours, so we have no industry number to anchor a bonus target to.

Set the target from your own realized history, and key any bonus to a measure you can compute from your own books.

The trial-experience premium deserves the same honesty.

No source our research could find quantifies what trial experience adds to base pay.

If the seat needs first-chair coverage, price it against what that coverage is worth to your docket rather than against a "litigation premium" number — because no sourced one exists in the material we read.

What you can do in the offer letter is name the experiences that move a candidate up your ladder: depositions taken, motions argued, second-chairs completed.

If the need is a docket surge rather than a seat, the flex option is a contract litigation hire.

Our research found no primary-source hourly rate ranges for contract or document-review work, so the only honest benchmark is live listings — read them before you assume a rate.

No survey our research read ranks which benefits litigation lawyers value most, so this section stays inside what the record documents — the bonus structures that surround base pay — rather than guessing at preferences.

The most recent completed year-end shows the shape of big-firm bonuses, as reported by the ABA Journal: Cravath's 2025 year-end bonuses ran $15,000 to $115,000 by class year, plus special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000, and Law360 noted in the same reporting that the $15,000-to-$115,000 scale had been unchanged since 2021.

Some firms key the bonus to hours — the same report says Cadwalader paid 120% of the year-end bonus to associates with at least 2,200 billable hours in 2025.

The 2026 special-bonus round moved separately: per the legal-press scorecard, Milbank announced summer bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000 with no minimum-hours requirement, payable August 31, 2026, and Cahill matched on September 24, 2026.

As of our research date (October 2, 2026), the 2026 year-end amounts had not been announced.

Two more pieces show up specifically in litigation offers.

Judicial clerkship bonuses: 73% of law offices in NALP's 2025 survey offered them, with amounts varying by clerkship type — relevant when your shortlist includes lawyers coming out of a chambers year.

And the loan-forgiveness asymmetry: Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the remaining Direct Loan balance after 120 qualifying monthly payments with a qualifying employer, and qualifying employers are U.S. government organizations and 501(c)(3) nonprofits — a private firm's years do not accrue credit.

A candidate weighing a prosecutor's office or a public defender against your offer is weighing something your salary alone has to beat.

For the rest of the package — health coverage, retirement, flexibility — our guide to the benefits small firms offer works through what a small firm can actually fund.

One rule worth keeping: name in the posting what applies to this seat, because in three of the states covered below — Washington, Illinois and Minnesota — the posting must describe benefits as well as the range.

Benchmark in layers and keep their scopes straight — the BLS all-lawyers proxy for your state, NALP's firm survey (dated January 1, 2025 and skewed toward large firms), and live postings for what your competition is offering this month.

Our guide to benchmarking law firm pay works through the mechanics; this section is about the rules around the number.

Start from what you may ask, because four states have taken salary history off the table.

California bars every employer — any size — from seeking an applicant's salary history, including benefits, orally or in writing, and from relying on it in deciding whether to hire or what to pay.

New York bars relying on an applicant's wage or salary history and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered or hired.

Illinois makes it unlawful to screen applicants by salary history or to request it as a condition of an interview or offer.

Massachusetts bars seeking it from the candidate or a current or former employer.

California also hands you the lawful anchor: you may ask what the candidate expects to earn in this position, and if they volunteer prior pay unprompted, you may consider it.

And an applicant there can demand the position's pay scale on reasonable request, whatever the employer's size — have the number ready before the first conversation.

Two of those states script what happens after a number is on the table.

In New York, you may confirm salary history only if, after a compensation offer is made, the candidate responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number; in Massachusetts, confirmation is allowed only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation has been made.

If a litigation candidate plays prior pay forward to justify more money, that is the moment New York's and Massachusetts' confirmation windows open — not before.

These are the four statutes our research read in full; other states and cities have their own salary-history rules we have not counted.

Building the conversation on what the candidate expects — the question California's statute expressly allows — draws on no salary history; confirm your state's current rule with your state labor agency or employment counsel.

The range you post is itself regulated.

California requires the pay scale in postings for employers with 15 or more employees and defines it as a good-faith estimate of what you reasonably expect to pay on hire, with penalties of $100 to $10,000 per violation; New York requires ranges at four or more employees, Washington and Illinois at 15 or more, Minnesota at 30 or more, and Massachusetts at 25 or more.

Where a range is required it is a term with teeth — set it before the first interview and keep it consistent with the number you offer.

Our litigation attorney job description template shows where the range and the billable expectations belong in the posting.

If the hire comes through a recruiter, price that too: our research found no primary source for recruiter fee percentages, so treat any quoted "standard" rate as a negotiating position — ask for the fee and any guarantee terms in writing.

The sourcing and screening half of the process is in our guide to how to hire a litigation attorney; this page picks up at the number.

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

• When the data ages. The BLS figures on this page are the May 2025 release, and NALP's survey figures are as of January 1, 2025. Re-pull your benchmarks when the next releases land instead of reusing these numbers indefinitely.
• When the market scale moves. The big-firm base scale sat at $225,000 to $435,000 until the July 1, 2026 raise — the first move since 2023, led by Milbank both times, per the legal-press scorecard. The move is public; expect candidates to ask where your firm stands when it happens again.
• When wage floors move. California's exemption floor for practising lawyers is a multiple of the state minimum wage — $70,304 a year at the 2026 rate — and the federal standard salary level, $684 a week ($35,568 a year) as of October 2026, matters for any hire relying on another exemption, such as a graduate awaiting bar results. Both figures can change; check the current rates before you rely on them.
• When bonus season lands. The 2026 year-end amounts were unannounced as of October 2, 2026; whatever scale is announced resets the context for your own bonus structure.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. Wage figures come from BLS's OEWS May 2025 release and NALP's published surveys as named; the overtime, posting-range, salary-history and bonus-repayment rules come from the federal regulations, state statutes and agency pages cited. They change — confirm your pay structure, classifications and offer terms with employment counsel and your state labor agency.