Attorneys’ Salaries Slipping Compared to Other Professions

New attorneys can expect to make less, in constant dollars, than their
colleagues did in 2006. Photo: Shutterstock

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its annual report on job numbers and salaries for a wide range of jobs. According to the data, lawyers’ salaries are on a downward trend.

The BLS noted that the number of salaried attorneys has increased by about 9,600 since 2015. However, that increase is smaller than the increases from 2012 through 2014, when more than 10,500 jobs were added each year.

What about salaries, though?

It turns out that the median salary for a lawyer is $118,160, which is certainly not a small paycheck. However, that amount is lower, in constant dollars, than it was in 2006. When adjusting for inflation, the median salary for attorneys was 2.9 percent higher in 2006 than it is today.

Ten years ago, only six occupational groups—chief executives, physicians and surgeons, dentists and dental surgeons, air traffic controllers, and podiatrists—earned a higher median salary than lawyers. 

Today, though, the list is quite a bit longer. In addition to the groups listed above, the list includes nurse anesthetists, computer and information systems managers, marketing managers, petroleum engineers, airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers, pharmacists, financial managers, advertising or sales managers, and natural sciences managers.

When focusing on the lower 25th percentile of salaries for attorneys--$77,850 per year—the list gets longer still, adding positions as diverse as compensation and benefits managers, computer hardware engineers, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, software developers, optometrists, purchasing managers, PR and fundraising managers, and HR managers.

Newly hired attorneys tend to start low on the salary scale, so this information is more relevant for them than the median salary information is.

At the high end of the salary scale, salaries are still increasing faster than inflation. But that clearly doesn’t hold true for the rest of the salary levels, because at least 75 percent are seeing their salaries fall in relation to inflation.

The BLS report only includes salaried positions. It does not count solo practitioners and equity partners in law firms.