Where Do Lawyers Fall In The Top Income Brackets?

Attorneys who make it to Biglaw reap the rewards of a stable and lucrative career, with great prospects outside of the exclusive confines of Biglaw.

Michael Allen

Michael Allen

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Michael Allen is Managing Principal at Lateral Link, focusing exclusively on partner placements with Am Law 200 clients and placements for in-house attorneys.

Between pay, perks, and prestige, the only better position to hold in the U.S. job market than an Am Law 100 associate is an Am Law 100 partner. Because of the lockstep nature of associate pay, and the relatively consistent formula for deriving partner compensation, attorneys in Biglaw are securely rewarded well above the 90th percentile for almost any other field. The few exceptions to these are specialized surgical fields that require between four and seven years of additional training on top of four years of medical school. However, the road to obtaining one of these positions is also arduous.

There are roughly 68,000 domestic associates and partners at Am Law 100 firms. However, there are around 1,300,000 lawyers in the U.S., meaning Am Law 100 associates and partners make up only 5% of the total population of lawyers. Therefore, when comparing salaries between Am Law 100 firms and professions, the top 5% is the most apt point of comparison.

Within law, the distributions of income are bimodal, meaning there’s a large gap between the distribution of incomes for Am Law attorneys and attorneys working at smaller firms, government offices, or corporations. However, there are individual cases where attorneys in non-Biglaw posts make many times more what the most handsomely rewarded Biglaw attorneys make.

NALP First Year Salaries

The NALP survey of first-year salaries illustrates this trend clearly. Without the skew from Biglaw though, the mean likely settles to around $60,000 — an almost $100,000 gulf between the two. The mean first-year salary for a non-Biglaw associate is around the same as the starting salary for most STEM bachelor’s and entry-level architects. Masters and bachelor’s degrees in almost any engineering field trump the average starting salary of a non-Biglaw associate.

On the other end of the spectrum, Biglaw partners rake in some of the top compensation, in the greatest volume compared to other professions. In the Am Law 100 alone, there are around 33,000 partners and another 9,000 counsel. On average, equity and non-equity partners in the Am Law 100 take home $1,114,000 a year.

CEOs come close. According to the Census Bureau, there are roughly 400,000 CEOs in the U.S. Of those, around 13% equal or surpass Biglaw’s average take-home, meaning there are roughly 52,000 CEOs equaling or beating Biglaw compensation, compared to 68,000+ in the Am Law 100 alone (not including counsel).

Consultants fall below the other two. The median salary for an experienced consultant in New York was $145,000, $50,000 below the median salary of a seasoned New York attorney. The largest difference lies in the top earners for each group. The 90th percentile for an experienced consultant starts at $260,000, compared to $780,000 for the top 10% of New York attorneys.

Investment bankers are rewarded handsomely for the long hours they put in. At the highest level, the average investment banker take-home almost aligns with Biglaw salaries. However, it takes many more years to get to the highest levels of investment banking. The leverage between vice presidents and managing directors is even worse in investment banking than in Biglaw. Goldman Sachs, for example, has around 12,000 vice presidents, but only promotes 400 people to managing director every two years. While investment banking can yield windfalls many times that of Biglaw, the chance of obtaining a senior position is much less likely.

Altogether, attorneys accounted for the largest group of people in the 1% within the U.S — with the majority of them at Biglaw firms. The next closest group was private-practice physicians. Overall, however, physicians in different disciplines and settings accounted for more of the top 1% than attorneys. Additionally, physicians had a higher “chance” of being in the top 1%. However, the latter requires many more years of training and schooling. Because of the more even distribution of physician salaries, when comparing the top earnings of physician and attorney salaries, attorney salaries almost unilaterally beat physician salaries.

One thing to consider, however, is that most associates will not make partner. There are around 32,000 domestic associates at Am Law 100 firms currently, compared to 30,000 partners. Because the runway for partnership is relatively short — 7-9 years — and the length of partnership is long — generally around 30 or more years — the promotion rate for associates is low. While associates enjoy staggering salaries for their experience compared to other professions, there is no guarantee of a continuous upward trajectory.

Many former associates who don’t make it to partner still enjoy salaries of equal or greater value, but there is far less security outside of Biglaw. Overall, attorneys who make it to Biglaw reap the rewards of a stable and lucrative career, with great prospects outside of the exclusive confines of Biglaw.


Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click ::here:: to find out more about us.