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When it comes to incomes, lawyers as a group do really well.  How well? Data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same governmental agency that tracks official unemployment figures, show that in 2017 lawyers made an average income of $141,890 and a median income of $119,250 (average incomes for judges were $108,340, and for paralegals and legal assistants $53,910).

Below is a more detailed breakdown of lawyer incomes* by percentile:

• 10th percentile: $57,430
• 25th percentile: $78,130
• 50th percentile: $119,250
• 75% percentile: $178,480

Lawyer incomes also varied by geography.  It looks like lawyers on the coasts and in higher population states made the highest incomes while incomes were lower in southern and central states:

How do lawyer incomes compare to incomes in other occupations? Extraordinarily well when you consider that the average income for all occupations was $50,620, or roughly one-third of the average income for lawyers. Of course, many lawyers don’t consider themselves average, particularly when taking into account all the education (and the student loans that come with it) required to become a lawyer. As it turns out, lawyers do pretty well compared to other professionals.  Perhaps lawyer money isn’t quite doctor money (on average), but it’s still really good. Below is a table showing average incomes for several different professions:

Lawyer incomes are also going to vary depending on whether the lawyer is in private practice, a corporation, government service, academia or public interest. For example, BLS data show state government lawyers with an average income of $90,100. And, incomes are also going to vary depending on where one is in the beginning, middle or later stages of one’s career.

However, in terms of broad strokes, taking lawyers as a whole, the numbers are clear. Lawyers do really well. So, how can lawyers take advantage of these great incomes? We’ll explore this in future blog posts.

* BLS estimates incomes based on data collected from the National Compensation Survey. BLS uses the term “wages” which includes, among other things, base and incentive pay. It notably excludes stock bonuses (defined as a payment to an employee in the form of company stock) and year-end bonus. This inevitably means that the income figures reported by BLS for lawyers under-reports total compensation for lawyers.