What’s the best place to work as a lawyer?
You’ve worked hard for your law degree, passed the bar, and you’re practicing your craft. The next important step in your career is to find the optimal location to work and settle down.
With so many great cities to choose from, it may be hard to narrow your choices. Should you move to a city where there’s a high demand for lawyers? Or to a city where lawyer salaries are among the highest?
To help you with the decision-making process, we’ve compiled a list of the best and worst cities for lawyers. Our study compared and ranked 384 metropolitan areas in the U.S. based on annual salary, cost of living, and job demand.
Using our data, we put together lists of the 20 best and worst cities for lawyers to give you a better idea of how legal industries vary across the country.
While it’s widely known that lawyers have high salaries, salary ranges vary depending on the city you’re practicing in. Lawyers in California get the highest pay, but the cost of living is also more expensive, so keep these factors in mind when deciding.
Check out the interactive map below to see the median lawyer salaries in different cities across the U.S.
Please select a state to see the salary.
After comparing hundreds of cities, we found that bigger cities have higher salaries and job demand, along with a higher cost of living. Major cities also have higher concentrations of legal firms, businesses, and organizations, providing more opportunities to practice different areas of law and form legal partnerships. Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 cities for lawyers.
San Francisco tops the chart for the best city for lawyers. Lawyers here earn the second-highest median salary of $168,990, which helps to offset the high cost of living. Even first-year associate attorneys earn an average salary of $70,529, which is $6,000 more than the national average.
As you accumulate experience, your salary will steadily increase as well. With an increase in income and job growth rate for lawyers over the last six years, California’s expanding legal industry provides a great environment for new or experienced lawyers.
Several big companies that have faced past CEO lawsuits are also headquartered in San Francisco, including Juul and Pinterest, so there may be opportunities to work with major clients.
Home to the esteemed Silicon Valley, San Jose is the second-best city for lawyers, beating out San Francisco for the highest median salary at $207,130. The cost of living is also lower compared to San Francisco, which allows for more financial flexibility. However, it falls behind San Francisco in terms of job demand, putting the city in second place.
Being surrounded by big tech companies means more opportunities to gain experience in corporate or tech law, and learn more about cybersecurity and tech-related risks in the legal space. Since there’s an abundance of up-and-coming startups, there may also be more demand for in-house lawyers.
Additionally, San Jose is one of the best cities for lawyers of color to become.
Where is someone working as a lawyer most likely?
Please enable javascript to play this video.
Video transcript available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK2PVtgWLp8.
Lawyers advise and represent clients on legal proceedings or transactions. Lawyers work for a variety of organizations, usually in office settings. Some work for federal, local, or state governments. Most work full time, and some work more than 40 hours per week.
Lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination. The median annual wage for lawyers was $145,760 in May 2023. Employment of lawyers is projected to grow 5 percent from 2023 to 2033, about as fast as the average for all occupations.
About 35,600 openings for lawyers are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire. Explore resources for employment and wages by state and area for lawyers. Compare the job duties, education, job growth, and pay of lawyers with similar occupations. Learn more about lawyers by visiting additional resources, including O*NET, a source on key characteristics of workers and occupations.
Lawyers represent clients in criminal or civil proceedings, including trials. Lawyers advise and represent clients on legal proceedings or transactions. Lawyers typically do the following:
- Research the intent of laws and judicial decisions
- Determine whether they apply to the specific circumstances of their client’s case
- Act as both advocates and advisors for one party in a criminal or civil proceeding
As advocates, they may present evidence and argue in support of their client for settlements outside of court, such as through plea bargaining or arbitration, or during court appearances, such as in hearings and trials. As advisors, they counsel clients about their legal rights, obligations, and options and suggest courses of action.
Lawyers may have different titles and duties, depending on where they work. For example, in law firms, lawyers perform legal work for individuals or businesses. Those who represent clients accused of wrongdoing or carelessness may be called criminal law attorneys or defense attorneys. Those whose expertise includes representing clients in trials are sometimes called litigators or trial lawyers. Corporate counsels, also called in-house counsels, are lawyers who work for a single organization. They advise the organization’s executives about legal issues related to its business activities, such as patents, contracts with other companies, taxes, and collective-bargaining agreements with unions.
Attorneys in federal, state, and local governments may have a variety of titles, including prosecutor, public defender, or general counsel.
Who is the largest employer of lawyers?
Rank
Firm name
Total number of lawyers (2022)
1
Baker McKenzie
4795
2
DLA Piper
4028
3
Norton Rose Fulbright
3084
4
Latham & Watkins
3078