Are paralegals exempt from overtime? What law firms must know under the FLSA

The Fair Labor Standards Act is the federal law behind overtime pay, and the Department of Labor writes the regulations that decide who is exempt from it.

For paralegals, the regulation answers the question directly.

29 CFR 541.301(e)(7), the learned-professional exemption's paralegal provision, states that paralegals and legal assistants "generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals" because "an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for entry into the field."

That is the federal default: a paralegal who does not fit a specific exemption is non-exempt, and the overtime rules apply to them.

The exemption the firm's own lawyers use is not available to staff.

Under 29 CFR 541.304, an employee holding a valid license to practice law who is actually engaged in the practice is an exempt professional, and the salary requirements do not apply — a license-and-practice test a paralegal position does not meet by design.

What the position is called does not move the line.

Job titles do not determine exemption status, per the Department of Labor's Fact Sheet 17D — the specific duties and the salary must meet the regulations.

A Senior Paralegal, a Legal Assistant or a firm's own Case Manager label all face the same two questions: what does the person actually do, and what are they paid?

For a firm administrator, the practical takeaway is to start from non-exempt and work backward: classify a paralegal as exempt only when a specific exemption's duties and salary tests are both met.

Classification sits alongside the supervision and screening duties that come with staff hires — our guide to hiring for your law firm covers the rest of that picture.

The learned-professional route fails for a reason the regulation states itself.

The professional exemption presumes work whose field requires an advanced specialized academic degree for entry, and 29 CFR 541.301(e)(7) says paralegals do not present that case.

The analysis runs on the field, not the firm: it asks what the occupation requires to enter, not what one hiring partner prefers for one seat — so an in-house requirement that hires hold a paralegal certificate does not change what the field itself requires.

The tests run on duties and salary, not on labels.

The administrative exemption is a different route with its own duties test in the Department of Labor's regulations — a separate test that the paralegal provision above does not decide either way.

What our research verified is narrower than the question a firm actually faces: the learned-professional rule, the salary level and the title rule.

Whether a particular paralegal or office-manager role clears the administrative duties test was left open in the sources we read, so treat that route as a question to answer against the regulation's text for your specific role — with employment counsel — rather than a default to assume.

Two anchors hold no matter which exemption a firm considers.

The salary level applies across the executive, administrative and professional exemptions: an employee must be compensated on a salary basis at a rate of not less than $684 per week (29 CFR 541.600).

And the title rule applies everywhere — job titles do not determine exemption status, so renaming the work administrative is a label, not a duties fact.

The regulation carves out one clear route.

The same paralegal provision that excludes the field generally allows the learned-professional exemption for a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job.

The regulation's own example: "if a law firm hires an engineer as a paralegal to provide expert advice on product liability cases or to assist on patent matters, that engineer would qualify for exemption" (29 CFR 541.301(e)(7)).

The route has two parts — the degree from another professional field, and its use in the work — and both have to be present.

How far the carve-out extends beyond the regulation's examples is not settled by the sources we read.

Whether a nursing degree qualifies for a legal nurse consultant role, for instance, is not addressed in the provision our research pulled.

If a candidate's prior professional degree might fit, that is a question to resolve against the regulation with employment counsel, not to assume from the job history alone.

The highly compensated route is less certain.

The Department of Labor's salary-levels page lists a highly compensated employee total of $107,432 a year, including at least $684 a week, alongside the standard level.

But our research could not verify the DOL opinion letters on paralegals, including the one addressing highly compensated employees, so we cannot tell you how the agency applies that total to a paralegal's duties.

What holds either way: whatever the compensation level, job titles do not determine exemption status — the duties must meet the regulations too.

Confirm a highly-compensated classification with employment counsel before relying on it.

The direct exposure is the overtime a misclassified paralegal should have been paid: an employee who does not meet an exemption's tests must be paid overtime, so treating a non-exempt role as exempt leaves unpaid hours on the table for as long as the classification stands.

How such an amount is calculated, how far back it can reach and what else attaches to it are enforcement questions — our research verified the classification rules and the salary levels, not penalty formulas, and those depend on the specific facts.

Employment counsel is the check for any exposure question at your firm.

The asymmetry is what makes the review worth doing before the hire rather than after.

The classification is decided by duties and salary against the regulation — job titles do not determine exemption status, and neither does the firm's preference, its budget or the pay it can find someone for.

A duties-and-salary review against 29 CFR 541.301(e)(7) and the salary level is a small, front-loaded task; reclassifying after the fact touches payroll records, pay periods and every week already worked.

The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division publishes the sources behind this page — Fact Sheet 17D on the professional exemption and the salary-levels page — and they are the right first documents to put in front of counsel.

State law can add obligations on top, which the last section below covers.

Salaried and non-exempt are not opposites — a firm can pay a paralegal a salary and still owe overtime.

The $684-per-week salary level is a threshold an exemption must clear, not a status switch: paying a paralegal at or above the level does not make them exempt when the duties test fails.

That is the mistake to design around, because it is the common one — the firm pays a market salary, assumes the salary settles the question, and the duties still come out non-exempt.

The numbers, as of October 2, 2026: the Department of Labor's salary-levels page lists the standard salary level at $684 per week, equivalent to $35,568 a year, and 29 CFR 541.600 sets the period equivalents at $1,368 biweekly, $1,482 semimonthly and $2,964 monthly.

The higher levels from the DOL's 2024 overtime rule — $844 per week, then $1,128 per week — are not in force, so if a planning document still carries them, it is out of date.

If the duties review lands on non-exempt, the pay design follows: keep the salary if the firm wants it, but treat the role as non-exempt and administer it as such.

The way a salaried non-exempt employee's overtime is computed is its own calculation question in the regulations, and one our research did not verify — confirm the method with employment counsel or the Wage and Hour Division before the first pay period runs on it.

One more input belongs in the decision: the state.

California, New York, Washington and Colorado set salary thresholds higher than the federal level, and a state can add obligations the federal rules do not — the next section covers where.

The federal level is the floor, and it is not the whole answer.

The Department of Labor's salary-levels page notes that state thresholds in California, New York, Washington and Colorado are higher than the federal $684 a week, so a firm operating in those states owes its paralegals the stricter local answer: where the state sets a higher threshold, an exemption that clears the federal level can still fail in that state.

States add more than thresholds.

California, for example, requires overtime at 1.5 times the regular rate for non-exempt employees for hours over eight in a workday and over 40 in a workweek.

For a firm scheduling non-exempt paralegals in California, the daily count matters as much as the weekly one.

State wage-hour rules like this stack on top of the federal ones, which is why the state check comes before the final classification.

The practical sequence for a multi-state firm: run the federal tests first, then the state's — its salary threshold and its own wage-hour rules — through the state labor agency's guidance or employment counsel.

Our research verified the four higher-threshold states named above and California's daily rule; it did not verify every state's wage-hour scheme, and the state labor agency is the check for the rest.

Employer information, not legal advice. Overtime rules and salary levels change, and state rules differ; confirm your classification and pay decisions with employment counsel and your state labor agency, and check the Department of Labor's current salary-levels page before you rely on the figures here.