How much should a law firm pay an of counsel attorney?

Start with the honest gap: no wage series in our research breaks out "of counsel."

The title sits inside the lawyer occupation, and the benchmark our research anchors on is BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release.

There, Lawyers (SOC 23-1011) had a national median annual wage of $159,670 — $76.76 an hour — with the 10th percentile at $78,360 and the 90th at $351,600, across 754,500 wage-and-salary lawyers.

Read that as the occupation's midpoint across the industries and experience levels BLS measures, not as an of counsel figure; if you are setting of counsel attorney salary as an employer, the series sets the neighborhood and the rest of this page sets the number.

One caveat at the top: BLS footnotes published lawyer wages of $239,200 and above, so treat the top percentile as approximate.

Two scope limits matter before you anchor on it.

OEWS wage estimates cover employees and exclude the self-employed, so an of counsel attorney in business for themselves is not measured in the series at all.

And the cut is the whole occupation, not the role: the median spans early-career lawyers to the most senior employed lawyers, across industries, so it cannot tell you what the title commands in your market.

Geography moves the number before anything about the role does.

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

Our of counsel attorney salary data page carries the lawyer occupation's national figures, labelled as a proxy, and links on to the lawyer state-by-state tables.

The other benchmark layer — postings for comparable senior lawyers in your market right now — is the one the offer section below weighs.

Our research found no published of counsel pay ladder — no class-year schedule and no practice-area table (BLS does not split the lawyer occupation by practice area).

So the adjustments are ones you make by defining the role first, then pricing what you defined.

Experience changes what the affiliation can carry — so let it change the scope before it changes the number.

The of counsel title carries different amounts of seniority at different firms: a former partner winding down a docket, a specialist the firm drops into one matter, a lawyer covering overflow during a busy season.

Write down which one you are hiring.

Matter judgment, client contact, and documents that go out under the firm's name are the expensive parts of the purchase, and they are what a senior of counsel candidate is selling — a defined-task arrangement under close review is a different purchase wearing the same title.

Price the scope you wrote down, not the title on the ad.

Our research found no national price list for practice-area pay.

A premium a candidate quotes for a specialty has to be tested against the offers in your own market, because our research found no source that prices one.

What you can do is check whether the specialty is scarce where you sit: if the same posting keeps coming back open, the market is telling you the number.

The firm's setting moves the anchor the candidate walks in with.

The same BLS series cuts lawyer pay by employer setting: lawyers in legal services (law firms, NAICS 5411) had a median annual wage of $157,870 in May 2025, while lawyers in management of companies and enterprises — corporate head offices, the closest BLS in-house proxy — had a median of $223,560.

A candidate leaving one of those settings carries that anchor into your negotiation.

Both facts belong in the price: what the candidate is stepping away from, and what the firm is actually buying.

Start with the shape of the affiliation, because it decides which rules attach to the structure you pick.

An of counsel attorney on your payroll, practicing law under the firm's supervision on matters the firm controls, is one thing: federally, an employee holding a valid license to practice law who is actually engaged in practice is an exempt professional, and the salary-level and salary-basis requirements do not apply (29 CFR 541.304).

A loosely affiliated lawyer who keeps their own clients, bills through their own firm, or divides time among several firms is a different classification question — whether they are the firm's employee at all decides which wage rules attach, and that is a call for employment counsel on the specific arrangement.

Our overtime rules page covers the exemption itself in detail.

Within the affiliation you have settled on, three structures cover the field.

A fixed retainer fits a standing affiliation: reserved capacity, a minimum monthly commitment, first-call coverage for a practice area.

Its whole value is predictability on both sides, so define in writing what the retainer buys — hours included, response expectations, and what happens when the work runs past it.

Our research found no source establishing typical retainer sizes; set it from the scope you defined, not from a figure you heard.

An hourly rate fits overflow, project and coverage work inside a longer affiliation.

Here the honest limit is that no primary source in our research publishes typical hourly or contract rates for attorneys, so there is no national number to copy — test the rate against the occupation medians above, the lawyer state tables the salary page links to, and live postings for comparable senior work in your market.

A percentage of collections or an origination split ties the of counsel's pay to the work's results, and it carries its own rule when the affiliation is loose.

If the of counsel is a lawyer at a different firm, ABA Model Rule 1.5(e) allows a fee division between lawyers in different firms only if it is proportional to the services each lawyer provided (or each lawyer assumes joint responsibility for the representation), the client agrees to the split in a confirmed writing that states each lawyer's share, and the total fee is reasonable.

That is the model text — your state adopts its own version — so run the arrangement past your state bar's ethics counsel before you paper it.

And keep a work split a work split: Model Rule 7.2(b) bars giving anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services, subject to narrow exceptions, so a share that rewards sending the client rather than doing work on the matter is a different question under a different rule.

The ethics rules here are state rules, and they turn on how the affiliation actually works — whose client it is, who supervises, where the lawyer bills from.

Confirm any percentage structure with your state bar's ethics counsel before you offer it, not after the first fee comes in.

No survey in our research ranks what of counsel candidates value, so treat this as the levers you control rather than a ranking to copy.

The common thread: whatever cash number you land on, the arrangement's other terms — flexibility, a reduced docket, independence from firm administration — are part of what you are negotiating, so put them on the table with the number.

The perks that move the offer are the ones that make those terms real.

Put the flexibility in writing so it is a term, not a vibe: the schedule, the minimum commitments, what "available" means and when.

State how your malpractice coverage treats the of counsel's work on firm matters — that is a question for your carrier, and the answer belongs in the affiliation agreement.

Cover CLE and bar dues for the affiliation period, and give the of counsel the same working stack a senior hire would get: a conflicts clearance before day one, a named supervising attorney, and staff and system access.

The fuller list for a small-firm budget — and what it costs — is in our guide to benefits small firms offer.

One benefit works the other way.

If a candidate is weighing your firm against a government or nonprofit role, loan forgiveness follows the employer, not the job: Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the remaining Direct Loan balance after 120 qualifying monthly payments made while working full time for a qualifying employer, and qualifying employers include U.S. government organizations at any level and 501(c)(3) nonprofits — private firms are not on the qualifying-employer list.

A firm therefore cannot offer PSLF, so it competes on everything else in the package; a candidate coming from a qualifying employer is giving something up that your number has to recognize.

Sequence the offer the way you scoped the role: terms first, number second.

Write down what the affiliation includes — whose clients, who supervises, minimum hours or availability, the term and renewal — then price that.

An offer conversation over a written scope is short; one over "we'd love to add you as of counsel" is a negotiation about a shape neither side has defined.

Benchmark in layers and keep the layers' scopes straight: the OEWS lawyer medians for the occupation and your state; postings for comparable senior lawyers in your market; and what the firm already pays the senior lawyer whose work the role most resembles.

Weight the layer that describes what you are actually buying.

Our guide to benchmarking law firm pay covers the sources and the adjustments.

Decide the walk-away number before the first call, so the negotiation moves toward it instead of discovering it under pressure.

Then run the conversation inside your state's rules.

Four salary-history statutes our research read on point: California Labor Code 432.3 bars all employers — 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.

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.

Illinois law (820 ILCS 112/10(b-5) and (b-10)) 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(c)(2)) bars seeking a prospective employee's wage or salary history from the candidate or from a current or former employer.

Those are the four statutes this page covers — we did not compile the complete map, and many cities and other states have their own rules, so check yours before the first call.

What you can do matters as much as what you cannot.

California's statute expressly lets you ask an applicant's salary expectation for the position, and lets you consider salary history the applicant volunteers without prompting; applicants there can also request the position's pay scale, which you must provide on reasonable request regardless of firm size.

New York allows confirming salary history in one situation only — after a compensation offer is made, if the candidate responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number; Massachusetts allows confirmation only after the candidate volunteers it or after an offer with compensation has been made.

And if you post the role, disclosure rules attach before the offer: California employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in the posting, and New York businesses with four or more employees must list compensation ranges for advertised jobs.

California defines the 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.

Winning without overpaying is matching money to scope.

Paying above the market for capacity the firm only needs in spikes buys nothing the work can reward; paying below it for matter judgment costs more in supervision and rework than it saves.

Whatever number you land on, put the terms in the affiliation agreement: pay and structure, term, renewal and termination, supervision, whose clients, and how malpractice coverage works.

The rest of the hire — sourcing, bar-status verification, the conflicts check and supervision duties — is in our guide to how to hire an of counsel attorney.

This page picks up at the number.

Our research found no published review cadence for an of counsel role, so anchor the review to the events that actually move the number:

• When the data refreshes. The figures on this page are the OEWS May 2025 release, and they age. Re-pull the occupation and state numbers when the next release lands instead of reusing this page's figures indefinitely.
• When the senior market moves. Your of counsel candidates price against what the market pays senior lawyers, and that market can move in a cycle: legal press reported Milbank's June 2, 2026 memo raising the large-firm associate scale effective July 1, 2026 — adding $10,000 for the first four class years and $20,000 for the fifth through eighth. That scale is an associate scale, not an of counsel benchmark, but it is the visible edge of the market a senior candidate is reading when they weigh your offer.
• When the rules move. The salary-history and posting-disclosure rules above are state statutes, and they differ from state to state — recheck your state's current requirements before each posting and each offer round rather than reusing last year's script.
• At every renewal. Long affiliations drift. Re-price the arrangement against the market at each renewal, and re-confirm the scope while you are at it — a retainer set for one level of coverage is not automatically the retainer for the next.

Between events, once a year is a defensible cadence for a role like this: pull the state numbers from the salary hub (the of counsel salary page links to the lawyer state tables), reread the postings in your market, and ask whether the structure still fits what the of counsel is actually doing — the role drifts faster than the number does.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. The wage figures come from the BLS OEWS May 2025 release as named above; the overtime exemption from DOL regulation 29 CFR 541.304; the fee-division and referral rules from the ABA Model Rules, which states adopt in their own versions; and the salary-history and posting rules from the state statutes cited. They change, and how they apply turns on the arrangement — confirm your pay structure and offer process with employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel before you act.