Lawyer Training Class: Lawyer Salary Information

Typically, a lawyer will have gone through four years of college followed by three years of law school, and will have passed a bar exam. The new lawyer has various career paths to choose from, and beginning salaries vary. For example, salaries at private law firms are usually much higher than salaries for public interest lawyers.

The median beginning salary of an attorney in his first year of employment depends on where the attorney finds work. According to a National Association for Law Placement's discussion of its 2010 Associate Salary Survey, the median salary of attorneys in their first year of practice at a law firm is $115,000 per year. Attorneys choosing to work in a public interest capacity, however, earn far less. These attorneys earn a median salary of $42,000 per year for those working in civil legal services and $50,000 for local prosecutors.

As attorneys gain experience, their services are more valuable and their salaries increase from the beginning levels. For example, the median beginning salary for an attorney working at a law firm was $72,000 per year to $160,000 per year, depending on the size of the firm, according to the National Association for Law Placement. With just five years of experience, median salaries increased to $90,000 to $190,000 per year.

For those attorneys choosing to work for a law firm, the number of attorneys at the firm tends to affect the level of pay. Typically, the larger the firm, the higher the pay. The median pay for beginning lawyers at smaller law firms with two to 25 lawyers was $72,000 in 2010, according to the NALP. Beginning attorneys at firms with 501 to 700 lawyers earned a median salary of $117,500, and earned a median salary of $160,000 per year at firms with more than 700 lawyers. These companies include those that have offices worldwide.

There are also differences in the mean, or average, salary of attorneys based on the state in which they practice. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all attorneys in Florida earned an average salary of $118,040 per year in 2010, while the average salary of an attorney in California was $155,740. In the middle are states such as Texas, where the average salary was $128,650 per year, and Illinois, where the average for all lawyers in 2010 was $132,620.

Lawyer Training Class

Lawyer Salary Information

First Year Salary

Experience

Firm Size

Regional Differences