Legal Salary Statistics 2026
Legal Occupations employ 1,305,620 people in the United States, with a median wage of $102,500 and a mean of $139,510 (BLS, OEWS May 2025, via PayCrunch).
Wage estimates: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Rankings, ratios and shares on this page are PayCrunch calculations from that national file. Figures are annual and not adjusted for cost of living.
Pay for Legal Occupations, SOC major group 23-0000, in the BLS OEWS May 2025 national file.
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Legal Occupations employ 1,305,620 people in the United States, with a median wage of $102,500 and a mean of $139,510 (BLS, OEWS May 2025, via PayCrunch).
Key statistics
Each line is one figure with its source. Quote any of them directly; the citation format is at the foot of the page.
- Legal Occupations employ 1,305,620 people, with a median wage of $102,500 and a mean of $139,510.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The group is 0.8% of US employment of 155,495,730.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Lawyers have the highest median in the group, at $159,670, with a mean of $185,840 and employment of 754,500.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates are second, at a median of $153,990.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers are third, at a median of $117,860.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers have the lowest median in the group, at $58,650, with employment of 48,580.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Lawyers is the largest occupation in the group, with 754,500 jobs and a median of $159,670.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Paralegals and Legal Assistants are next, with 392,880 jobs and a median of $62,890.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers follow, with 48,580 jobs and a median of $58,650.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- 3 detailed occupations in the group have a median of $100,000 or more and employ 794,900 people, 60.9% of the group's employment.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The national file lists 8 detailed occupations in this group.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Legal Occupations have a 10th percentile of $49,400 and a 90th percentile of $287,070 (5.81x).Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates have the widest gap in the group between those percentiles: $46,950 at the 10th and $221,710 at the 90th, 4.72 times, across 24,030 jobs.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Paralegals and Legal Assistants have the narrowest gap in the group: $44,740 at the 10th and $101,500 at the 90th, 2.27 times, across 392,880 jobs.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The mean wage for the group, $139,510, sits $37,010 above the median of $102,500.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The group's median is $51,520 above the all-occupations median of $50,980.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Both percentiles are published for 8 occupations in the group.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
All 8 occupations in the group by median wage
Every detailed occupation in SOC major group 23-0000 with a published annual median, sorted by that median. Employment and the mean are the figures BLS publishes for the same occupation.
| Occupation▲ | SOC▲ | Employment▲ | Median▲ | Mean▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lawyers | 23-1011 | 754,500 | $159,670 | $185,840 |
| Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates | 23-1023 | 24,030 | $153,990 | $143,830 |
| Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers | 23-1021 | 16,370 | $117,860 | $125,990 |
| Arbitrators, Mediators, and Conciliators | 23-1022 | 9,210 | $75,530 | $91,010 |
| Legal Support Workers, All Other | 23-2099 | 46,760 | $72,110 | $89,660 |
| Judicial Law Clerks | 23-1012 | 13,290 | $64,920 | $72,950 |
| Paralegals and Legal Assistants | 23-2011 | 392,880 | $62,890 | $69,700 |
| Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers | 23-2093 | 48,580 | $58,650 | $62,350 |
National figures, BLS OEWS May 2025. Click a column to sort.
The 15 largest occupations in the group
The same occupations, ranked by national employment.
| Occupation▲ | SOC▲ | Employment▲ | Median▲ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lawyers | 23-1011 | 754,500 | $159,670 |
| Paralegals and Legal Assistants | 23-2011 | 392,880 | $62,890 |
| Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers | 23-2093 | 48,580 | $58,650 |
| Legal Support Workers, All Other | 23-2099 | 46,760 | $72,110 |
| Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates | 23-1023 | 24,030 | $153,990 |
| Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers | 23-1021 | 16,370 | $117,860 |
| Judicial Law Clerks | 23-1012 | 13,290 | $64,920 |
| Arbitrators, Mediators, and Conciliators | 23-1022 | 9,210 | $75,530 |
National figures, BLS OEWS May 2025. Click a column to sort.
Pay spread for the 8 occupations with a published 10th and 90th percentile
The ratio is the published annual 90th percentile divided by the published annual 10th percentile. Sorted from the widest spread to the narrowest. An occupation is left out when either percentile is unpublished or the 10th percentile is not above zero.
| Occupation▲ | SOC▲ | Employment▲ | 10th percentile▲ | 90th percentile▲ | 90/10 ratio▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates | 23-1023 | 24,030 | $46,950 | $221,710 | 4.72x |
| Lawyers | 23-1011 | 754,500 | $78,360 | $351,600 | 4.49x |
| Legal Support Workers, All Other | 23-2099 | 46,760 | $43,800 | $179,960 | 4.11x |
| Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers | 23-1021 | 16,370 | $61,110 | $207,480 | 3.40x |
| Arbitrators, Mediators, and Conciliators | 23-1022 | 9,210 | $47,220 | $155,440 | 3.29x |
| Judicial Law Clerks | 23-1012 | 13,290 | $46,180 | $113,140 | 2.45x |
| Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers | 23-2093 | 48,580 | $38,170 | $90,830 | 2.38x |
| Paralegals and Legal Assistants | 23-2011 | 392,880 | $44,740 | $101,500 | 2.27x |
National figures, BLS OEWS May 2025. Click a column to sort.
Pay for individual occupations
Pages for occupations in the tables above, where PayCrunch has a page for that SOC code. Group-level pay for every major occupation group is on the salary by occupation group page.
How to cite this page
Ready to paste for the page:
PayCrunch (2026). Legal Salary Statistics 2026. Aggregated from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://paycrunch.co/stats/legal-salary-statistics.html (accessed 16 October 2026).
Ready to paste for the lead figure on this page:
Legal Occupations employ 1,305,620 people in the United States, with a median wage of $102,500 and a mean of $139,510 (BLS, OEWS May 2025, via PayCrunch).
Method
Source
Every wage and employment figure on this page comes from the national file of the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release of May 2025, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. No wage here is a PayCrunch estimate. Rankings, ratios and shares are PayCrunch calculations from that file and are labelled as such.
What is counted
Legal here is SOC major group 23-0000, Legal Occupations. Employment, median and mean for the group are the published major-group row. The occupation tables are the detailed occupations whose SOC code starts with 23- (8 occupations). A detailed occupation is counted in the six-figure set when its published annual median is at least $100,000. The employment share of that set uses the major-group employment as the denominator. Rankings that need a median or an employment figure leave out an occupation that does not publish that figure. The 90/10 figure is the published annual 90th percentile divided by the published annual 10th percentile. For the group, both percentiles are the major-group row. A detailed occupation is in the spread table only when both percentiles are published and the 10th percentile is above zero (8 occupations). The gap between the group mean and the group median, and the gap between the group median and the all-occupations median, are subtractions of those published figures.
Rows left out
An occupation with no published annual median or percentile is left out of any ranking that needs that figure. In this release that is a handful of occupations for which BLS publishes an hourly wage only. The all-occupations median, and the all-occupations 10th and 90th percentiles, are the single total row in the file. That row describes workers. It is not the median of the occupation-level medians, which is a different statistic and is published on the average salary statistics page.
Rebuilding these numbers
The script that computes every figure on this page is .github/stats-gen/gen_national_stats_pages.py. It reads data/open/national_M2025_dl.xlsx and regenerates this page. Nothing on this page is typed by hand.
Limitations
- OEWS is a survey. Every figure carries sampling error, and the error is largest where the occupation is smallest.
- Wage and salary employment only. OEWS excludes the self-employed, so occupations with many independent workers are under-covered.
- The 90th percentile is not a maximum. It is a point on a wage distribution. Pay above it exists.
- No cost-of-living adjustment. All figures are nominal annual wages.
- SOC titles are classification labels, not job titles as employers use them, and one SOC code can cover several distinct jobs.
- One release only. These are May 2025 figures; OEWS releases are not straightforwardly comparable across years.
Frequently asked questions
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