What type of attorney earns $128,000?
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Anonymous
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According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a lawyer is $128,000 per year. However, all the attorneys that post here seem to earn significantly more than that.
I understand that salaries vary regionally, so presumably that $128,000 is being dragged down by lower-income areas. Additionally, I understand the bimodal distribution of attorney salaries, i.e. it’s not a bell curve (some earn a lot and some earn a relatively small amount). However, can you provide an example of DC/MD/VA attorneys that may earn $128,000 per year? What would they do? What type of firm would they work at? What about attorneys that earn *gasp* $95,000 (by definition, some must earn below the median)? |
Anonymous
| $128k is pretty normal for most of the country. People in DC do tend to earn more. People on DCUM love to inflate their salaries and seniority. |
Anonymous
| How much would an attorney writing wills and trusts make? Or working at a closing company? I assume maybe $160k? |
Anonymous
| A GS-14/1 in DC is $126,000. I know a ton of attorney positions that are laddered from GS-11 to GS-14, so for a less experienced attorney in DC in the fed govt, you’re under that median for more than you aren’t. |
Anonymous
| That's a total normal salary. The ones making more are partners in laws firms/ associates in medium sized to bigger firms and/or government attorneys with a couple of years in. |
Anonymous
At least in Maryland, most less experienced attorneys working in state government - prosecutors, public defenders, AAGs - make well under $128,000 per year. |
Anonymous
| Nearly all GS 14 and 13 attorneys in the government. |
Anonymous
Median is different from mean, which is the average. So, half make less than the median.Likely, DC salaries drive-up the mean, but are not common |
Anonymous
| A very sad one. |
Anonymous
| There are a gazillion different kinds of attorneys in many different markets. You have your rural town lawyer who hangs up a shingle and takes payment in corn sometimes, your legal aid attorneys who are in it for the service and make next to nothing, you have in house lawyers a small start ups, and you have insurance lawyers and personal injury lawyers who make make nothing until they get a big case every now and then, you have judicial clerks, government lawyers, and then you have Wall Street lawyers, General Counsel at Fortune 500 companies, etc. |
Anonymous
| Staff attorneys for big law firms |
Anonymous
The Maryland Attorney General makes $125,000…. MD government seems to pay their lawyers pretty badly. If the rumor is true that a reason law shifted from an undergrad degree to the JD is so government attorneys could qualify for better pay, then it didn’t work in MD. |
Anonymous
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1. Associates in mid law/regional firms
2. Federal government attorneys 3. Some (but not all) small firm attorneys with certain niches 4. In-house (lower rung in a large market, possibly higher up in lower cost of living areas) 5. I bet someone doing title/real estate transactions might make around this 6. Independent contractor-type working part-time for a prior biglaw employer or similar gig situation That said, the spread of attorney salaries are heavily bimodal. Lots making ~$70k on one end of the spectrum and biglaw on the other. |
Anonymous
| I earned that as a first year associate |
Anonymous
| An attorney, their first year at the firm, will earn less than an experienced long-term administrative assistant (someone who decades ago would have been "their secretary") |