How Much Do Lawyers Make? Real Salary Data, the Gaps, and What Averages Hide

How much do lawyers make? The median lawyer salary in the United States is $159,670 a year, or $76.76 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2025). The average is higher, at $185,840, because a minority of top earners pulls it up. The bottom 10% earn less than $78,360, and the top 10% more than $351,600.

That median is up 5.6% from $151,160 in May 2024, and it is technically accurate. It is also close to useless for any one lawyer. It blends a public defender starting at $69,600, a first-year associate in New York on a $235,000 base salary, and a solo practitioner in a small town who keeps whatever is left after rent and payroll.

The profession is large and concentrated. Lawyers held about 863,700 jobs in 2025, and California and New York alone account for roughly one in four salaried lawyers. This guide breaks the numbers down by year, by hour, by experience, by practice area, and by state, explains what the official statistics leave out, and shows what really drives attorney income, with every figure sourced.

How much do lawyers make a year?

The most reliable source is the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, which collects pay data from employers. Its May 2025 estimates for lawyers cover 754,500 salaried positions across the country.

The BLS numbers at a glance

Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Monthly figures are the annual wage divided by 12, before taxes.

How much do lawyers make a month and a week?

At the median, a salaried lawyer earns about $13,306 a month, or $3,071 a week, before taxes. The average works out to $15,487 a month. Between the 10th and the 90th percentile, annual pay differs by a factor of about 4.5, which is why a single "average lawyer salary" tells you very little.

Who employs lawyers, and what each pays

According to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 52% of lawyers work in legal services, meaning law firms, and 11% are self-employed. Government is the other big employer. Median pay by employer type in May 2025:

• Federal government: $178,380
• Legal services (law firms): $157,870
• Local government: $131,390
• State government: $115,330

Demand is still growing. The BLS projects lawyer employment to rise 5% between 2025 and 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, with about 28,700 openings a year.

Why lawyer salary statistics mislead

Lawyer pay is not a bell curve. A small group of very high earners sits far above everyone else, and the official surveys are not built to capture them. Three distortions matter.

The average is not the typical lawyer

The national mean ($185,840) is $26,170 higher than the median ($159,670). The gap gets wider in markets with a strong large-firm presence. In the Atlanta metro area, the BLS reports a mean of $206,950 but a median of only $138,210. If you are comparing your own income to "the average," compare it to the median instead.

The BLS leaves out the owners

The OEWS survey only counts employees. Its technical note states that it "does not include the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms." Many law firms are organized as partnerships, so equity partners, who earn the most, and solo practitioners, whose incomes range widely, are both missing from the headline numbers.

The same note excludes "nonproduction bonuses" from wages. Year-end bonuses at large firms, which reach six figures for senior associates, do not show up either. The official median describes salaried lawyers' base pay, not attorney income as a whole.

Starting salaries have two peaks

The NALP data on new graduates makes the problem visible. For the Class of 2025, the salary distribution has a broad peak between $60,000 and $100,000, which holds 50.0% of reported salaries, and a sharp spike at $225,000, the large-firm rate, with 21.5%. Very few graduates earn anything close to the mean.

In other words, new lawyers do not start on one ladder. They start on two, and the choice of first employer weighs on pay for years.

How much do lawyers make per hour?

There are two very different answers, depending on whether you mean what a lawyer is paid or what a lawyer bills.

Billing rate versus pay

Measured as pay, the BLS median is $76.76 an hour and the mean $89.35 for salaried lawyers. Measured as billing, the Clio Legal Trends data puts the average lawyer hourly rate at $349 in 2025, up 4% from the year before. The blended rate a firm charges, mixing lawyer and paralegal time, averages $311.

The difference between $349 billed and $77 paid is not all profit. It pays for staff, rent, software, insurance, and marketing, and above all for the hours that never get billed.

The billable hour funnel

Clio's 2025 benchmarks show how much of a working day turns into revenue at the average firm:

• Utilization, 38%: lawyers capture 3.0 billable hours in an 8-hour day.
• Realization, 88%: 2.6 of those hours are actually invoiced.
• Collection, 93%: 2.4 hours' worth of work is finally paid.

At the $349 national average, 2.4 collected hours come to about $838 a day. The rest of the day goes to intake, admin, client development, and work written off. That is why time tracking and billing software have such a direct effect on income.

Hourly, flat fee, or contingency

Not every lawyer bills by the hour. Many criminal defense, immigration, and estate planning practices quote flat fees per matter. Personal injury lawyers usually work on contingency: the American Bar Association notes the fee is "often one-third to 40 percent" of the recovery, paid only if the case succeeds. Income then depends on case outcomes, not hours.

How lawyer pay grows with experience

Seniority opens doors, but the jumps in lawyer pay come from the type of employer and, later, from the ability to bring in clients. The starting point already varies more than in most professions.

First-year lawyers: a $100,000 median with a wide spread

NALP's Class of 2025 findings, measured ten months after graduation, put the national median starting salary at a record $100,000, up 5.3% from $95,000. Behind that number:

Big law associates: the lockstep scale

Large firms pay associates on a lockstep scale by class year. Since late 2023, the market rate has started at $225,000 for first-years and climbed to $435,000 for eighth-years, with year-end bonuses from a prorated $15,000 to $115,000, as the ABA Journal reported.

That scale was never universal. NALP's 2025 Associate Salary Survey found a median first-year salary of $200,000 as of January 1, 2025, with only 32% of offices paying $225,000. Firms of 250 or fewer lawyers had a median of $150,000.

The scale moved again in 2026. On June 2, Milbank announced raises of $10,000 to $20,000 per class year, effective July 1, according to Above the Law. First-year base pay rose to $235,000 and eighth-year pay to $455,000, and other large firms matched within days.

Public service lawyers

At the other end, NALP's 2023 Public Service Attorney Salary Survey found a median entry-level salary of $69,600 for public defenders and $64,200 for civil legal aid lawyers. After 11 to 15 years, legal aid lawyers reached a median of $86,000, still below what many big law associates earn in their first year.

How much do lawyers make by practice area?

The BLS does not publish pay by practice area. The best national proxy is billing rates, which Clio tracks from tens of thousands of legal professionals. The table compares each field with the $349 national average.

Source: Clio, average lawyer hourly rates by practice area, updated March 2026.

Corporate and patent lawyers: the top of the range

What do corporate lawyers do? They advise businesses on formation, contracts, financing, mergers and acquisitions, and securities compliance, mostly outside the courtroom. Deals are large, clients are companies, and fees scale with the stakes, which is why corporate work dominates big law and its lockstep salaries.

Patent work pays at a similar level for a narrower group. To prosecute patents before the USPTO, a lawyer must pass a separate registration exam and show scientific and technical training, usually a degree in engineering or the sciences. That scarcity supports intellectual property rates of $453 an hour.

Personal injury lawyers: paid on results

The $337 hourly figure says little about personal injury income, because most of these lawyers work on contingency. A firm that settles a few large cases in a year can out-earn a corporate practice; a firm that loses or settles low can go months without fees. Income is lumpy, and it depends heavily on how many good cases come through the door, which is why marketing for personal injury lawyers is so competitive.

Criminal, family, and immigration lawyers: volume practices

These fields are just as technical, but clients are individuals paying out of pocket, often under stress. Criminal work averages $216 an hour, far below the national rate, and many criminal lawyers work as public defenders. Family ($344) and immigration ($366) sit close to the average.

The difference is volume. To reach the same income as a corporate lawyer, a family or immigration practice needs many more matters, so its earnings depend on a steady flow of new clients more than on rate.

How much do lawyers make by state and city?

Location matters as much as practice area. Here are BLS figures for a selection of states, including the highest and lowest paying.

Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.

The highest-paying states

Ranked by mean wage, the District of Columbia leads at $242,800, followed by California ($230,040), New York ($220,180), Colorado ($206,440), and Massachusetts ($205,980). Ranked by median, New York comes first among them at $207,860. Mississippi has the lowest mean in the country, at $108,930, less than half the DC figure.

Billing rates follow the same map. Clio's 2025 data puts the average lawyer rate at $492 an hour in DC, $426 in New York, and $422 in California, against $196 in West Virginia.

Metro areas, Atlanta included

San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, stands out with a median above $300,000. Atlanta shows the opposite pattern: a mean among the highest on this list but a median well below the national figure, a sign of a deep gap between large-firm lawyers and everyone else. Georgia's average billing rate, $369 an hour, is above the national average.

Indiana and the Midwest

Indiana's 8,970 salaried lawyers earn a median of $126,860 and a mean of $175,850. Clio puts the average Indiana billing rate at $291 an hour, but adjusted for regional prices it rises to $316, close to many coastal states in purchasing power. NALP sees the same regional gap among new associates: median first-year salaries ranged from $180,000 in the Midwest to $205,000 in the South and West.

How much do law firm owners make?

Owners do not earn a salary. They take a share of what the firm earns after every expense, which is why the BLS cannot measure them and why their income varies so much from one year to the next.

Large law firm partners

Major, Lindsey & Africa's 2024 Partner Compensation Survey, based on more than 1,700 partners at the largest US firms, found average compensation of $1.4 million, up 26% since 2022. Equity partners averaged $1.9 million and nonequity partners $558,000.

Equity partners carry the risk in exchange: a lost anchor client, a slow year, or a departing team hits their share directly.

Solo and small firm owners: revenue minus overhead

For a solo lawyer or the owner of a small law firm, income is collected fees minus overhead. A rough benchmark using Clio's averages: 2.4 collected hours a day at $349, over 240 working days, comes to about $201,000 in collected fees per lawyer, before rent, staff, software, insurance, and marketing are paid.

Small changes in the funnel move that number fast. Each extra billable hour captured per day, after realization and collection losses, is worth roughly $68,500 a year at the national average rate. The firm itself also becomes an asset, which matters when the time comes for selling a law practice.

Client development is the real multiplier

The partner survey is explicit about what drives pay: the rise in compensation since 2022 came mostly from a 26% increase in average originations, the business partners bring in, with billing rates up 36% also contributing. A technically brilliant lawyer without a book of business hits a ceiling, whatever the practice area.

The same logic applies to a solo practice. Income depends less on credentials than on a predictable flow of qualified prospective clients. Our guide on how to get clients as a lawyer covers the channels that work.

How long does it take to become a lawyer, and what does it cost?

The long path into the profession explains part of the pay gap with other careers, and the cost of that path shapes many early career choices, starting with the pull of big law salaries.

The standard path: seven years and a bar exam

The BLS describes 7 years of full-time study after high school: 4 years of college, then 3 years of law school leading to a Juris Doctor (JD), followed by the bar exam in the state where you want to practice. Most states require a degree from an accredited law school.

Tuition is the main cost. LawHub data puts average law school tuition at $59,759 a year at private schools and $32,051 for residents at public schools in 2025. Over three years, that is about $179,000 and $96,000 respectively, before living expenses and any scholarships.

Can you become a lawyer without law school?

In a few states, yes. California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington let candidates take the bar exam after "reading the law," several years of supervised study in a law office or with a judge. New York, Maine, and Wyoming allow a mix of law office study and law school, according to the ABA Journal.

The route is rare and demanding. The same article reported that only 17 of 60 law readers who sat the bar exam the previous year passed, a 28% rate against 73% for graduates of ABA-approved schools. And a license earned this way does not change the economics: a new lawyer still has to build a client base from scratch.

Are lawyers highly paid? Key takeaways

Compared with most workers, yes. The median lawyer earns more than three times the $50,980 median for all US workers and well above the $102,500 median for legal occupations. But the averages hide several professions under one title:

• Employer type decides the starting point: $225,000 or more in big law, around $70,000 in public service.
• Location can double pay, from a $91,690 median in Mississippi to $207,860 in New York.
• Practice area sets the rate ceiling, from $216 an hour in criminal work to $461 in corporate litigation.
• Client development separates the top earners from everyone else, at every stage.

What a lawyer makes over a career depends less on the specialty than on the ability to attract clients and run the practice as a business. That is the lever we work on at Hendy: building the online visibility that brings qualified clients to your firm without relying on referrals alone, through law firm SEO and a broader law firm marketing strategy.

Want to know what that could change for your practice? Tell us about your firm and we will show you where your next clients can come from.