Argue, advise, negotiate and write. Seven years of school and one hard exam stand between you and the license.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $159,670 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $78,360 at the lower end to about $351,600 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
7 to 8 years after high school, on the usual route.
$105,000 to $280,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a license or registration before you can work.
Good demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$159,670
Bottom tenth
$78,360
Top tenth
$351,600
The national median is $159,670 a year, the bottom tenth earn $78,360 or less and the top tenth $351,600 or more, in the 2025 survey. Be careful with the median: it mixes very different jobs. Large-firm associates and public defenders both count as lawyers.
$74,678 to $85,447
Grade 11, step 1, of the federal GS (General Schedule) in 2026, outside and inside the Washington area
The Justice Department says a new law graduate qualifies for grade 11, and a year clerking for a judge qualifies you for grade 12. There is no single starting salary across all lawyers: which first job you get depends heavily on your law school and your first-year grades.
$102,990 to $221,370
Half of all workers in the 2025 survey earn between these two figures
Partners are owners taking a share of profit rather than salaried employees, so the wage survey does not count them.
Roughly, all in
$105,000 to $280,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is two years at a community college, two years finishing a bachelor's degree in state, then a public in state law school, with the admission test, the bar exam and the commercial bar prep course most people buy. The high end is four years at a public university followed by a private law school at around $70,000 a year, which is where a large share of students actually go. Debt is the real risk here: many graduates owe six figures the day they are sworn in, and the interest on that is not in these numbers. Compare the debt against the starting salaries at the specific school rather than the national median for all lawyers.
Law school debt is the real risk of this career. Many graduates leave with six figures owed. File the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, chase merit scholarships hard, and compare the debt against the actual starting salaries at that school rather than the median for all lawyers.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Work for a government agency or a qualifying nonprofit and make 10 years of payments on federal loans, and the rest is forgiven. This program was built for exactly this situation.
Loan repayment assistance programs
Many law schools repay part of your loans if you take a public interest job.
Merit scholarships
Law schools compete for high test scorers with money. A higher score is worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Going to a cheaper state school
If you plan to practice in one state, the flagship public law school there is often the cheapest strong option.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Any bachelor's degree, then three years of law school, then the bar exam in the state you want to work in.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
There is no pre-law subject requirement. Take English, history and anything that makes you argue and write. Debate helps more than it sounds.
Bachelor's degree, any subject
4 years
Law schools accept every major. Political science, history, English, economics and engineering all work. Grades matter more than the subject.
LSAT (Law School Admission Test)
3 to 6 months of study
The admission test accepted by every accredited law school. Most people study for three to six months. Your score and your grade point average are the two numbers admissions runs on.
Law school
3 years
Three years for the Juris Doctor degree. First year is contracts, torts, property, civil procedure, criminal law and legal writing. Grades in that first year drive which jobs you can get.
Bar exam and admission
2 to 3 months of full-time study
Two or three days of testing, plus a separate ethics exam and a character and fitness background check. You are admitted by one state's highest court, not by a national body.
English
Lawyers write for a living. Reading hard text closely is the core skill.
History and government
Cases only make sense inside the system that produced them.
Debate or public speaking
Building an argument under time pressure is exactly the job.
Math or logic
The admission test leans heavily on formal reasoning.
There is no national law license in the United States. Each state's highest court admits lawyers to its own bar, and practicing without that admission is a crime. Most states and the District of Columbia now use the Uniform Bar Examination, which produces a score you can transfer to another of those jurisdictions instead of sitting the whole thing again. California and Florida are among the states that run their own exams. From July 2026 most jurisdictions are moving to a redesigned version of the exam, with the old one available until February 2028.
Multistate Bar Examination
Multiple choice, worth half the score on the Uniform Bar Examination. It is the part scored nationally.
Multistate Essay Examination
Written essays across a spread of subjects, worth 30 percent.
Multistate Performance Test
You are handed a file and asked to produce a real lawyer's document, worth 20 percent.
A separate ethics exam
Nearly every state also requires the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, usually taken during law school.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Litigation
Suing and defending. Less courtroom and more written motions than films suggest.
Corporate and transactional
Deals, contracts and companies, mostly at private firms.
Criminal, prosecution or defense
The fastest route to actual courtroom time.
Family, immigration and housing
Where most ordinary people meet a lawyer. Emotionally heavy and always needed.
Intellectual property
Patent work requires a science or engineering degree on top.
A summer job in a law office
Even filing and answering phones tells you whether you like the building.
Writing that people read
A school paper, a blog, anything where an editor cut your work apart.
A second language
Immigration, criminal and family practice run short of lawyers who can speak with the client directly.
A technical undergraduate degree
Engineering or science opens patent law, which needs a technical degree.
A Juris Doctor degree also leads to compliance, policy, lobbying, journalism, business and government work where you never appear in court. That is a fine outcome, but do not plan on it as the reason to enroll, because you would be paying a lawyer's tuition for a job that did not require the degree. Go in intending to practice, and treat the other doors as a backup rather than a plan.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Mostly reading and writing at a desk. You go through documents, research how courts have ruled before, and draft: a motion, a contract, a letter, an argument. Phone calls with clients who are frightened or angry. Meetings about strategy. If you litigate, a court appearance is an occasional punctuation mark, and you prepare for it for days. Deadlines are set by courts and do not move, which is the real source of the pressure in this job.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
O*NET OnLine (the Department of Labor's occupation database) counts about 863,700 lawyers in the United States in 2025, with about 28,700 job openings a year. It projects growth of 5 to 6 percent between 2025 and 2035, faster than average.
Unlike medicine, law school has no prerequisite courses at all. Music majors, welders and biology graduates sit in the same first-year classroom. What admissions looks at is your grade point average and your admission test score.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Lawyers first, then the rest of the field. See every career in law and public safety.
Last checked October 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. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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