Workers' compensation attorney job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A workers' compensation posting has six working parts: the side of the practice, the claim work, the bar admission you require, the skills and systems, a good-faith pay range with benefits, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

If you are still deciding what the role needs — which side of the docket the hire sits on, the level, where to source candidates — our guide to how to hire a workers' compensation attorney covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

And if the posting itself is the unfamiliar part, our guide to writing a law firm job posting covers the general anatomy.

Core duties.

Write the work a candidate can picture, not adjectives: the side of the practice, the matters you file, the forum they are heard in, how far into a claim this hire carries it, and who they answer to.

Workers' compensation is a two-sided practice — attorneys who represent injured workers, and attorneys who represent the employers and insurers responding to claims — and the duties read differently on each side, so write the one you are hiring for.

Duties worth a line on the posting:

• Evaluating new matters: screening potential claims against the intake criteria your firm uses, and documenting the engagement [say how cases get signed at your firm]
• Building files: medical records and treatment history, wage records, employment files, witness statements — and, on the defense side, the employer's report and personnel file
• Preparing and filing the claim paperwork your state's system requires [name the forum and the deadlines yourself — state workers' compensation procedures were outside our research, so confirm the specifics with your state bar rather than copying another state's posting]
• Appearing at [hearings / conferences / mediations] [say how often this hire should expect to be on the record]
• Handling written discovery and depositions
• Drafting motions, briefs and appeals [say how much of the written work this hire owns]
• Negotiating settlements and evaluating resolution offers [say how settlement authority works at your firm]
• Keeping clients informed at every stage of the matter
• Managing the caseload, deadlines and calendar, and directing the paralegals and legal assistants who support the files

One boundary shapes the duties block: the work has to sit inside the jurisdictions where the hire is authorized to practice.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(a) says a lawyer must not practice law in a jurisdiction in violation of its regulation of the profession, or assist another in doing so — and the "assist" clause is the firm's exposure, not just the lawyer's.

Filings and appearances happen in a named place, so write the jurisdiction and the forum to match where the hire's license actually runs.

These are the ABA's model rules; your state adopts its own version, so confirm the wording that fits with your state bar's ethics counsel.

Qualifications and bar admission.

The credential line does the heavy lifting on 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 claims are heard, 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 the check before you rely on the credential, and again before the start date.

Decide what you will accept and write exactly that.

If you would consider a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction, know what the ABA's model rule provides for such a lawyer: Rule 5.5(c) allows one admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction — and not suspended or disbarred — to provide legal services on a temporary basis in four named situations, one of which is in association with a locally admitted lawyer who actively participates in the matter.

Check with your state's admitting authority on how that lawyer could work your files before you post a waive-in line — the paths and their conditions are state-specific and not something a posting should promise.

If you would hire a graduate who is not yet admitted, be careful twice over: states' rules on what an unadmitted graduate may do were not verified in our research, so confirm with your state's admitting authority before you post the role — and know the title rule, because a lawyer not admitted in a jurisdiction must not hold out or represent that they are admitted to practice law there (ABA Model Rule 5.5(b)(2)).

Experience follows the required-versus-preferred split: a background that transfers into your side of the docket — the other side of workers' compensation practice, insurance defense, a judicial clerkship — belongs on a preferred line unless you genuinely require it, so you do not screen out candidates whose experience fits.

The candidate-side view of the practice is in our workers' compensation attorney career guide.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — case management, document generation, e-filing, medical-records organization, deadline and calendar tools — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

The non-software skills that matter in this practice are specific: reading medical records and treatment histories, the written product (motions, briefs, appeals), negotiation with opposing counsel and, on the defense side, carriers and adjusters, calendar control across hearing deadlines, and client communication with people who are off work and recovering.

If you ask candidates for a writing sample or a drafting exercise, keep it on a mock file — under the FLSA's definition of "employ" ("to suffer or permit to work," 29 U.S.C.

203(g)), a candidate doing real, usable work for the firm may be an employee owed wages.

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

Pay range and benefits.

Anchor the range in your market and your budget, then adjust for the duties you wrote above.

The broadest benchmark in our research is the federal wage survey: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, lawyers (SOC 23-1011) had a median annual wage of $159,670, with the full series running from $78,360 at the 10th percentile to $351,600 at the 90th — the spread of the whole profession, not a floor and a cap for your hire.

The series is occupation-level — one line for all lawyers — so treat every figure in it as the all-lawyers proxy for a workers' compensation hire.

In the same release, lawyers in the Legal Services industry (law firms, NAICS 5411) had a median annual wage of $157,870, and OEWS excludes the self-employed, so it does not measure what a firm owner takes home.

State figures are on our workers' compensation attorney salary page.

A second anchor, from a different survey: among firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, a first-year salary of $150,000 or less was the most common response (44% of offices) in NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey.

NALP's full sample is large-firm-heavy, so if your firm sits in the smaller-firm band, that cell is the one to weight; set the range from what the role you wrote actually is.

Whatever you post should be a range you believe — and in the jurisdictions listed below, each verified from statute or the state agency, the law requires pay information in the posting itself: California (employers with 15 or more employees, which must also give the pay scale to any third party that posts for them), Washington (15 or more; wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits, in effect since January 1, 2023), Illinois (15 or more; pay scale and benefits, a hyperlink allowed), Minnesota (30 or more employees in the state; the starting salary range and a benefits description, and ranges may not be open-ended), Massachusetts (25 or more in the state; effective October 29, 2025), New York State (four or more employees), New York City (a good-faith pay range since November 1, 2022), Colorado (compensation and benefits in postings generally), Connecticut (effective October 1, 2026) and Virginia (the wage, salary or range in each posting).

California also requires the pay scale on an applicant's reasonable request regardless of employer size — the posting duty applies at 15 or more employees — and it defines "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.

Nevada works differently: there, an employer gives the wage or salary range to an applicant who has completed an interview, rather than in the posting.

Other places have rules we did not read, and the thresholds move — check with your state labor agency before you post.

Two more blocks finish the posting.

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 caseload target, hearing-travel expectation or billable target, as your firm's own numbers.

And classification: under federal law (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 — but California has no such carve-out, and exempts a practising attorney only if they also earn at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time work, which works out to $70,304 a year ($1,352 a week) at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90.

Confirm classification with employment counsel in your state before you set the posting's pay line.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

In a small firm, the hire is the docket, so write the breadth in honestly: the matters they will own from intake to resolution, the clients they will counsel directly, the staff they will direct.

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

If this is a solo's first attorney hire, say what the hire inherits and what the firm still expects the owner to carry.

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

Adapting for the side of the practice.

The two sides are different jobs that share a statute, and the posting should say which one it is.

A claimant-side practice hires for building medical proof, carrying a hearing schedule, evaluating resolution offers and counseling people who are off work; a defense practice hires for litigating disputed claims, working with employers, carriers and third-party administrators, and meeting reporting expectations.

A firm that takes both sides should say the split, because a candidate built for one is not automatically built for the other — and on either side, ask for experience with the kind of files your firm actually runs, not "workers' comp experience" in the abstract.

If you expect a caseload target or after-hours availability, state it as the firm's own number rather than leaving it to guesswork.

Adapting for hybrid or remote days.

Hearing dates anchor this role to specific forums, so say where the hire will appear and where they will work the rest of the week.

When part of the week is remote, the license question follows the lawyer, not the desk: ABA Formal Opinion 495 (Dec.

16, 2020) concluded that a lawyer may 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 — and the opinion says local contact information on websites, letterhead or business cards would improperly establish a local office.

Confirm the arrangement with your state bar's ethics counsel before you publish a hybrid line.

Five wordings sink otherwise good workers' compensation postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Bar-admission wording that invites practice where the hire is not admitted.

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

Write the admission requirement as the state where the claims are heard, and treat any role for an out-of-state or unadmitted lawyer as a confirm-with-the-admitting-authority question before the posting goes up.

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," "hungry" and "recent grad" from the 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 intent to discriminate unless justified by a business purpose.

Keep the process accessible, too: an employer must provide an accommodation a disabled applicant needs 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) bars all employers from seeking an applicant's salary history and from relying on it in hiring or pay decisions; New York (Labor Law 194-a) bars relying on it, requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted, and seeking it from a current or former employer; Illinois (820 ILCS 112) bars screening by it, requiring it for an interview or offer, and seeking it from employers; Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A) bars seeking it from the candidate or their employers, and it may be confirmed only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation has been made.

The posting states above overlap here too: Virginia's posting law also bans seeking salary history, Nevada bans seeking it and instead requires the range be given to an applicant who has completed an interview, and Connecticut bars asking about salary history unless the applicant volunteers it.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask about salary expectations for the position, and an applicant who volunteers history without prompting may have it considered.

Other states and cities have rules we did not read, so check yours before the interview stage.

4. Conviction-history questions too early.

A law firm is an employer first: fair-chance timing rules apply to its own hiring like anyone else's.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) bars asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment; New York City's Fair Chance Act makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider criminal history before a conditional offer; and Illinois's law bars asking until the applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview — or, if there is no interview, until after a conditional offer.

If your application form asks about criminal record, check your state and city law before you post — other states and cities have fair-chance rules this page does not cover.

5. Vague everything — and hype in its place.

"Workers' comp attorney wanted," no side of the practice, no forum, no level, no range — an umbrella posting pulls applications across every level of experience and saves you none of the sorting.

The opposite error is the same problem in costume: "unlimited earning potential" and other hype lines tell a candidate nothing about the work, the structure or the number.

The fix is the template above: name the side, the case mix, the forum, the stage coverage a hire will own, and a range you believe.

If the level is associate, say associate; if the firm genuinely needs a lawyer flexible on level, say what the docket decides.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — a slow reply reads as a closed door.

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

Prepare the interview the same way for every candidate — the same questions, the same structure, a scoring sheet — so comparisons stay fair and every question stays tied to the job.

And before yours goes up, browse the live workers' compensation 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, 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.