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What's The Best City For Lawyers?

Get ready to move to... Birmingham, I guess.

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It’s always a fun thought experiment to imagine that there’s some better city for lawyers than New York. Sure, there may be more purchase power in other cities and some parts of the country don’t vacillate sharply between oppressively hot and will-sappingly cold, but if you’re looking to build a long-term career at the highest levels, New York is the best market for that.

But it’s still possible to be the biggest fish in a smaller pond and it might be a tad more comfortable too. If you wanted comfort, then you probably shouldn’t have become a lawyer, but here we are.

AdvisorSmith has a new list of the best cities to go a-lawyerin’ in and the methodology makes a good deal of sense, ranking cities based on a) the cost of living index for each city, (b) the average annual salaries for lawyers in the city, and (c) the density of jobs for lawyers in each city.

So what did they find?

The #1 city for lawyers is our nation’s capital, Washington D.C., which has the highest concentration of jobs for lawyers of any city in our study, with over 3 times the national average. The city also offers average salaries for lawyers of $179,980, which is 25% above the national average.

Well good for Washington. It’s not a secret that we’ve long thought D.C. lawyers are a bit soft, but maybe it’s because they’ve been coddled by the city where they practice being such a delightful cesspool. Houston checks in at second, which makes some sense as a booming market in a relatively low-cost city.

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The best cities for lawyers are large cities, with 9 of the top 10, and 38 of the top 50 cities being cities with populations of 500,000 or higher. Major cities have higher concentrations of businesses and organizations in need of legal assistance, creating more opportunities for attorneys and their careers.

That tracks. It’s actually astounding that big cities don’t make up the whole top ten. The lone outlier in the top ten of this survey is Tallahassee, which clocks in at 3. Apparently, the best way to get on this list without being in a major city is to be in a state capital, which makes some sense because lobbying is a thing, but living if Floribama is really one of the top three cities to be a lawyer in, then it’s time to find a new profession.

You can check out all the numbers here, but for ready reference, here are the top 10 cities:

1 Washington, DC
2 Houston, TX
3 Tallahassee, FL
4 Chicago, IL
5 Miami, FL
6 Birmingham, AL
7 Philadelphia, PA
8 Atlanta, GA
9 Pittsburgh, PA
10 Richmond, VA

New York is apparently 11th. When you consider the role cost of living plays in this survey, that’s actually quite impressive.

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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