How Much Do Lawyers Make? A Complete Salary Guide by Experience, State, and Practice Area (2026)

Last Updated: July 2026

If you’re asking how much do lawyer make, the honest answer is: it depends more on where you work and who signs your paycheck than on the fact that you passed the bar. A first-year associate at a major New York firm can start at $225,000. A first-year public defender in the same state might start closer to $60,000. Both hold the same license.

This guide breaks down real lawyer salary data, from entry level lawyer salary figures to BigLaw partner pay, using federal wage data and legal industry salary surveys, not guesswork.

Quick Facts: Lawyer Salaries at a Glance

Key Takeaways

• Average yearly income of a lawyer – $151,160. However, range of salaries below this figure is vast; it goes from around $73K to about $239K.
• Your work location is more influential factor for many lawyers than years of experience. A public interest lawyer with 15 years experience earns less money than a first-year associate in a big law firm.
• Firm size is the determining factor of the starting salary for most lawyers. Small, medium, and large law firms have totally different pay scale systems.
• “Lawsyer salary” and “lawsyer income” do not refer to the same thing. Partners, solo practitioners, and contingency fee lawyers are paid by billing rates or outcome of case rather than wages; hence, BLS wage statistics does not reflect their total income.
• A popular figure of $225,000 in BigLaw is true but it is a rare thing. It refers to only a small part of lawyers’ population.

How Much Do Lawyers Make? National Averages and Median Salary

Start from the initial amount first since that’s what everyone wants to find out.

The median salary for lawyers amounted to $151,160 in May 2024, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It means that half of all lawyers in America made more money than that, and another half made less.

The average wage lies above the median, and that’s the point where you should pay attention to the contradiction among the sources right away since the amount varies greatly – some sources claim that the average salary for a lawyer ranges between $176,000 and $183,000. The cause of the difference is due to the surveying method and time of surveying, but there is a definite trend everywhere. A small portion of extremely highly-paid lawyers working in big law firms pushes up the average salary above the real one that a lawyer makes.

It is precisely why the median, not the average, is the number to start with when answering the question of how much lawyer makes.

The bottom 10 percent of lawyers made less than $72,780, while the top 10 percent made over $239,200. This difference in pay – $166,420 to be exact – says everything about this occupation except for the obvious fact that although the licensure remains constant, the pay doesn’t.

Entry Level Lawyer Salary and Lawyer Starting Salary

New graduates pose an even more pointed form of this query: What is a starting lawyer’s salary?

There is only one dividing line for the answer – private firms against public service.

According to NALP’s Associate Salary Survey of 2025, the total median starting salary for first-year associates is reported at $200,000. However, this figure is highly misleading. Base salary for first-year associates varies from $115,000 to $215,000 according to the size of the firm.

But there is also another extreme. The famous Cravath scale – a salary range established by Cravath, Swaine & Moore and adhered to by all of its peers – serves as a base for the salary of $225,000 for first-year associates. Yet this is not the salary for the whole professional community. Only 32% of reporting law offices paid this sum to their new hires, reaching 45% in case of the largest firms. And this is the figure used only in a limited number of major cities: New York City, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, and Austin.

As far as public service goes, the picture is entirely different regarding the starting lawyer’s salary. According to the data from the NALP’s Public Service Salary Survey, lawyers who practice in civil legal aid organizations, public interest organizations, and public defender offices have always made between $57,000 and $70,000, which is significantly less than half of what a big-firm associate would make.

Lawyer Salary by State

Geography influences the number just as much as everything else in this list.

The District of Columbia always boasts the highest annual mean salary for lawyers, which is above $220,000 based on BLS statistics for May 2024. The second tier includes California, Massachusetts, and New York. The top five jurisdictions when it comes to annual mean salaries of lawyers are always Washington D.C., California, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut – a combination of regions which feature all major law firms, big corporations, and federal government offices.

In the other extreme, low cost of living states located in the South, Mid-west, and Mountain West areas tend to feature the lowest mean salaries for lawyers.

Important note: average statistics calculated from the state level by independent statistical agencies (and not BLS’s own state-level tables) may show slight differences in their exact values based on the sources used. For specific and exact values in a particular state, you can use the BLS Occupation Employment and Wages statistics program at bls.gov.

Comparison: Lawyer Pay by Setting

Average Lawyer Salary by Practice Area

The average earning of lawyers in different legal specialties varies widely.

Intellectual property (IP) law has a tendency to rank close to the top of the first-year associate pay scale. NALP notes that the median first-year pay for IP associates amounts to $225,000, $25,000 higher than the median first-year pay in all specialties. IP laws require additional qualifications, such as expertise in sciences.

Corporate and business laws follow close to or above the average median pay. This is especially true for law firms working with big companies. Thus, despite being a relatively small state, Delaware has one of the highest levels of pay among the states because of its leading position in incorporating companies in the USA.

Personal injury law does not require a regular pay rate. In this specialty, the lawyer is paid according to the contingency fee system. Thus, the earning of a successful personal injury attorney who works on a contingency basis might be much higher than the salary of corporate attorneys, but it depends entirely on the number of the cases won.

Lowest Paid Lawyers: Public Defenders, Legal Aid, and Public Interest Attorneys

While looking into the subject matter of the lowest paid lawyers, you will see that it is precisely this part of the legal profession that takes that bottom place on the scale, not because it has less significance but rather due to the way it is financed.

The salary gap between five-year experienced civil legal services lawyers and lawyers in other public service employers reaches more than $7,000 and $16,000 respectively, and by the time these lawyers reach the 11-15 year experience level, the median salary for civil legal services attorneys becomes $86,000 – $20,000 lower than their public service colleagues.

Based on the results of NALP’s 2023 Public Service Attorney Salary Survey, the median starting salary for public service lawyers became $69,499 for the lawyers at public interest organizations, which is way below the salary that was paid to lawyers at private law firms. As an example, the salary of a first-year associate lawyer at a law firm of up to 100 lawyers in 2023 reached $155,000.

The disparity has persisted over the years, not just an example from a single moment in time. From NALP’s survey data over the decades, it is clear that entry level legal aid and public defender salaries have increased only slightly each decade, while salaries in private firms have risen dramatically over the same time period.

It is important to be upfront about the reasons this may affect your decision to choose a public interest legal career: there is a salary discrepancy between public interest and other law positions that is both documented and that is likely to grow rather than decline with experience.

Law Firm Size and Its Effect on Attorney Salary

One thing that affects how much you earn as an attorney in a private practice is the size of your firm, even more so than your practice area and the location within a state.

The median salary for attorneys at big firms (over 700 lawyers) in their first year was $215,000 while for smaller firms, the numbers are much lower, close to half the number in most cases. The disparity is not only confined to first years but persists throughout the years as law partners in bigger firms charge higher hourly fees and benefit from the profits of the bigger firms.

For small firms and midsize firms, the solution is usually elsewhere in the form of good work-life balance, more interaction with clients, and quicker progression into partnership.

Lawyer Income Beyond Base Salary

Base salary tells only part of the story for a lot of practicing attorneys, and this is where “lawyer income” and “lawyer salary” genuinely diverge.

Partners at equity level don’t draw a fixed salary at all, they earn a share of firm profits, which at large, successful firms can run from the high six figures into the millions. This income isn’t captured in BLS wage surveys, which track salaried employees.

Bonuses are a major part of total compensation at large firms, often tied to firm profitability and individual billable hours, and can add tens of thousands of dollars on top of the base salaries listed above in strong years.

Contingency-fee attorneys, most common in personal injury, employment, and some consumer protection work, earn a percentage of settlements or verdicts rather than a salary. This structure means income can swing dramatically year to year based on case outcomes.

Solo practitioners set their own rates and absorb their own overhead, so “salary” isn’t really the right frame at all, net income after expenses is the more accurate measure, and it varies enormously by practice area and local market.

Latest 2026 Update: What’s Changing in Lawyer Compensation

A few trends are affecting lawyer salary into 2026 worth mentioning in case you are trying to analyze the provided information for practical application purposes:

• The $225,000 first-year pay benchmark stayed consistent in the leading markets rather than going up any further, meaning that the high increase in associates’ salaries in the past several years might have leveled off already, at least in the top end of the market.
• Government hiring slowed down. Hiring slowdown in federal sector made public service legal positions hard to obtain despite the low salary in such jobs.
• Knowledge of technology has become a factor of pay premium. There is a growing need for lawyers who not only know how to do the legal work but also know how to apply technology to analyze the data.
• Public service salaries continue to stay significantly behind private-sector ones with no signs of closing that gap based on the available data.

Currency of data: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ pay statistics tend to be released with about a one-year delay (as of this writing, the latest full national statistics from the BLS will be from May 2024), while salary survey information for firms, such as from the National Association for Law Placement, tends to be annual. The figures in this guide are based on the most recent official data available.

Conclusion

Well, then, how much do lawyers make? There’s not one straight answer to be had – it’s an estimate that goes from below $73,000 to over $225,000, based on location, employer, and type of legal work involved. The median of $151,160 nationally is just that, though, and doesn’t take into account the disparity between the lawyer working as a public defender and the one working as a corporate associate, yet both of whom have the exact same education and degree. Location, area of practice, and whether you practice public or private law makes far more difference in salary than does the law degree itself.

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