Firings, harassment, unpaid wages and discrimination. You act for the worker or for the company, and the two jobs look very different.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$159,670
Starting out
$78,360
Top tenth
$351,600
The national median is $159,670 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $78,360. These are the published figures for lawyers as a whole, because employment lawyers are not counted separately. Within the specialty the spread is wide: a partner defending big employers earns far above the top of this range, and a legal aid lawyer representing workers earns near the bottom of it.
Management or plaintiff
Whose side you take decides how you get paid
Management-side lawyers defend companies and bill by the hour, so the money is steady and the clients are large. Plaintiff-side lawyers represent workers and usually take a share of what they win, often around a third, so a good year and a bad year look nothing alike.
Less money, a life back
Moving from a firm to a company's own legal department
Many employment lawyers move to a company after a few years and advise the human resources team directly. Pay usually drops, hours usually drop more, and you stop having to record every six minutes of your day.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a cheap four year degree, two years at a community college then a transfer to an in state public university, followed by an in state public law school, the law school entrance exam and the bar exam fees. The high end is four full years at a public university, a private law school at full price, and a bar prep course on top of the licensing fees. Six figures of debt is normal in this career. Law school scholarships are large and genuinely negotiable once you have an offer in hand, so the top figure is a starting point rather than a settled price.
Six figures of debt is normal. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) covers the college years and federal loans cover law school, and law school scholarships are large and negotiable once you have an offer.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Work full time for a government agency or a qualifying nonprofit, pay a federal student loan on an income driven plan, and the rest can be forgiven after 10 years of payments. Plenty of employment lawyers start at a labor agency for exactly this reason.
Fee shifting
Under many of the laws in this field, a worker who wins can make the employer pay their lawyer's fees. It is the reason small cases are worth bringing at all.
Bar dues and training paid
Employers cover your license fees and the continuing education hours you owe every year.
Full benefits
Health insurance, retirement plans and paid parental leave are standard at firms, companies and agencies alike.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Seven years after high school at a minimum, and there is no shortcut in almost every state.
Bachelor's degree, any subject
4 years
There is no required pre-law major. Grades and writing ability matter far more than what you studied.
The LSAT (Law School Admission Test)
Months of preparation
The admission test accepted by every accredited law school. Your score and your grade point average decide which schools and which scholarships open up.
Law school
3 years
Three years for the juris doctor degree. Take employment discrimination, labor law and a workers' rights clinic if the school has one.
The bar examination
2 to 3 months of study
Taken after graduation in the state where you want to practice, plus a separate ethics exam and a character and fitness background check.
Associate, then partner, agency or in-house
5 to 10 years
You start doing research, taking witness statements and drafting. Real responsibility for your own cases comes in a few years.
English and writing
Almost all of this job is writing clearly about what happened and why it matters.
Debate or mock trial
Arguing a position you were handed, in front of someone unimpressed, on a clock.
History or government
The civil rights laws you will use every day came out of a specific fight. Knowing that story helps.
A part-time job
Seriously. Having been scheduled, underpaid or talked to badly by a manager teaches you what the clients are describing.
There is no national law license. Each state's highest court admits lawyers after its own bar examination, an ethics exam and a character and fitness review. Most states now use the UBE (Uniform Bar Examination), written by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, made up of multiple choice questions, essays and practical written tasks. Its advantage is that a score earned in one participating state can be transferred to another without sitting the whole exam again. California, Florida and Georgia run their own exam instead.
Accredited law schools only
Almost every state requires a degree from a law school approved by the American Bar Association. Check before you apply anywhere.
Your state's flagship law school
Usually the best value in the state and the strongest network with local firms, agencies and judges.
Schools with a workers' rights clinic
A clinic lets you handle real cases under supervision in your second or third year. For this field it is the single most useful thing on a resume.
Part time and evening programs
Four years instead of three so you can keep working. Many city law schools offer them.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Discrimination and harassment
Race, sex, age, disability, religion, pregnancy and retaliation claims. The biggest single slice of the field.
Wages and hours
Unpaid overtime, misclassifying employees as contractors, stolen tips. Often brought as a group case for a whole workforce.
Wrongful termination and severance
Negotiating an exit, or arguing that a firing broke a contract or a law.
Leave and accommodation
Medical leave, disability accommodations and return-to-work disputes.
Noncompete and trade secret fights
Whether an employer can stop you working for a competitor. The rules differ sharply by state.
A second language
Wage theft and unsafe work hit workers who do not speak English first. Being able to take their statement directly matters.
Human resources or union experience
Knowing how a workplace really runs makes you better at both sides of this job.
Statistics
Group pay and promotion cases are argued with numbers. Lawyers who can read the data are worth more.
A government agency internship
A summer at a labor or civil rights agency is the fastest way into the field and the least competitive door.
The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigates workplace discrimination charges and can sue employers itself. The Department of Labor enforces the wage, overtime, family leave and workplace safety laws. Every state has its own version of both. These agencies hire lawyers straight out of law school, pay less than a firm, hand you real cases quickly, and qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. A lot of people in this field start there and move to a firm later with experience nobody else has.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
A call with someone who was fired last week and is still angry and upset, where your job is to get a clear timeline out of a painful story. Then drafting: a charge to file with an agency, a response to the other side, a demand letter. An afternoon reading three years of emails and payroll records looking for the one line that proves what you think happened. Somewhere in there a mediation, which is two rooms and a go-between and an offer that moves all day. And you record your time in six minute blocks, because that is how the firm gets paid.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In almost every state your boss can fire you for a bad reason, or no reason at all, as long as it is not an illegal reason. Montana is the one state that generally requires good cause after a probation period. That single rule is why this whole specialty exists.
Before most discrimination lawsuits can be filed, the worker has to bring a charge to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the matching state agency and get a notice letting them sue. Miss the filing deadline, which is often measured in months, and the claim is gone no matter how strong it was.
Many workplace laws say an employee who wins can have their legal fees paid by the employer. Without that rule a case worth $20,000 would never be worth bringing, and almost nobody would have a lawyer.
California refuses to enforce nearly all of them, some states allow them freely, and others only for higher earners. The same contract can be worthless in one state and binding across the border.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.