Law firms and other legal employers hiring associate attorneys on LawFirmHires post a median of $120,000 a year, across 114 employers and 222 listings that state annual pay (October 6, 2026).
The middle half of those listings offer $95,000 to $170,000.
This is advertised pay, not earnings: for what associate attorneys take home, see our associate attorney salary guide.
Listings per pay band.
The highlighted band holds the employer median of $120,000/yr.
Employer median of posted annual pay for each role with at least 30 listings and 10 employers stating it.
States with at least 30 listings and 10 employers stating annual pay.
Other states are too thin to report on their own.
| State | Employer median | Listing median | Listings | Employers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | $165,000/yr | $166,250/yr | 38 | 21 |
| Illinois | $121,250/yr | $90,000/yr | 39 | 14 |
Posted pay is what employers advertise to attract applicants.
It often runs above government wage estimates for the same occupation, because listings skew toward open, competitive roles and the ranges often include the top of a pay band.
Our associate attorney salary guide blends listing data with Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data to estimate what people in the role actually earn.
Use this page for what the market is offering today, and the guide for typical earnings.
All figures come from the 7,274 active job listings on LawFirmHires on October 6, 2026, posted by 1,784 employers.
We removed 196 exact duplicates (same employer, title, city, state and pay range) first.
Posted pay is the midpoint of the range an employer advertises, or its single figure.
Hourly and annual postings are analyzed separately and never converted into each other.
Values below $5 or above $500 an hour, or below $15,000 or above $1,000,000 a year, are treated as data errors and dropped.
Employer medianis our headline: we take each employer’s own median, then the median across employers, so a firm posting hundreds of openings counts once.
The plain listing median is shown alongside.
We suppress any figure built on fewer than 30 listings or 10 employers, and flag anything under 100 listings as a small sample.
Pay medians use only listings whose pay we can read as a number from a structured field; listings that give pay only in the description count toward the “states pay” shares but not toward medians.
Associate attorney and senior associate listings are combined.
These are advertised rates, not earnings.
They exclude bonuses and other incentive pay unless an employer folds them into the posted range, and listings on a job board are not a random sample of all legal jobs.
Figures are frozen for the Q4 2026 release and refreshed quarterly; earlier releases are not revised.
Corrected October 6, 2026: A listing now also counts as stating pay when its description gives a dollar wage, salary or pay range.
The first version of this release (October 6, 2026) counted structured pay fields only and reported that 34.9% of listings stated pay (94.2% for government attorney listings), an undercount, because many employers put the range only in the description text.
Pay medians were and remain based on structured pay fields only.
LawFirmHires, “Associate Attorney Pay in Job Listings: Q4 2026 Data,” Q4 2026 data release, listings snapshot of October 6, 2026. https://www.lawfirmhires.com/research/data/associate-attorney-pay/
More first-party data: Paralegal Pay in Job Listings · Legal Assistant Pay in Job Listings · Litigation Attorney Pay in Job Listings · Legal Pay Transparency.
All research: LawFirmHires Research.
