Liam, a sophomore, came to my office to discuss legal careers. “I actually want to find out more about lawyer’s salaries,” he said. “I’m going to be taking out loans for law school, most likely. How do I find that information?” he asked.
“That’s a very fair question,” I replied. While many students are looking forward to law school, some are equally anxious about loans, debt, salaries and just understanding the legal profession.
A great resource to look at salary information for lawyers is NALP (www.nalp.org). They publish an annual associate salary survey and other surveys about salaries and careers.
As we went through the research, it confirmed that there is a huge range of possible entry-level legal salaries, depending on whether you work in the private or public sector, what size firm you work for, and where you are located geographically.
According to NALP’s 2023 annual associate salary, the overall median entry-level associate base salary as of January 2023 was $200,000. This was up $35,000 from when the survey was last administered.
While firms of more than 1,000 lawyers showed a median salary for first years of $215,000, firms of 100 lawyers or fewer showed a median salary of $155,000, up from $120,000 in the 2021 survey. Salaries at law firms varied depending on location. Very large metro areas, such as New York, LA, DC and San Francisco reported higher first year salaries in general.
Liam and I next looked at NALP’s Salary Distribution Curves, which give tremendous insight into how much lawyer salaries can vary. We found that for the Class of 2022, there were three “peaks” or clusters of salaries. The cluster on the left side of the chart reflected salaries of $50,000 to $90,000, which actually accounted for more than half of the reported salaries. There were also two “peaks” on the right, which reflected very different salaries; $215,000 for 17.2% of the salaries and $205.000 for 5.3%. So although the mean salary was $116,398, a close look at the salary distribution curve showed definite clusters where salaries tended to be a lot lower, or a lot higher than that mean number.
Public sector salaries showed a different story. We looked at the findings from the NALP/PSJD 2022 public service attorney salary survey. These salaries tended to be lower than private sector salaries. For example, the median entry-level salary for a legal service attorney was $57,500. Public defenders had a median of $59,700 for entry-level that increased to $100,500 with 11-15 years of experience. Public interest organizations had a $63,200 median entry- level salary which increased to $95,000 for experienced attorneys.
Despite the often lower public sector salaries, we found ways to help with loan repayments and tuition. We looked at different law schools LRAP (Loan Repayment Assistance Programs) for their graduates who go into public sector careers, and at law schools that offer public interest fellowships for those pursuing careers in public service—some of which included up to full tuition scholarships. We also looked at the Access Lex Institute, https://www.accesslex.org, which has a list of scholarships as well as extensive information on financing law school.
“That was a lot of information,” Liam concluded. “It’s a little overwhelming, but I’m glad to know it’s there.”
Hillary Mantis consults with pre-law students, law students and lawyers. She is Assistant Dean of the Pre-law Advising Program at Fordham University and author of career and admissions books, including the Essential Guide to Law School Admissions. https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Law-School-Admissions-ebook/dp/B0BTDVYZ8C You can reach her at altcareer@aol.com.
