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. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$159,670
Legal aid or small town
$78,360
Big firm partner
$351,600
The national median is $159,670 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $78,360. Be careful with the median: pay in this field is split in two rather than spread out. Large-firm associates and public defenders both count as lawyers and earn wildly different money.
$65,000 or $225,000
There is not much in between
Large corporate firms in big cities pay a standard first-year salary well over $200,000. Government, legal aid, small-town and public interest jobs start around $60,000 to $80,000. Which one you land depends heavily on which law school admitted you and your grades in the first year.
$351,600 a year
Equity partners and senior in-house counsel
Partners at the largest firms earn far above this, but they are owners taking a share of profit rather than salaried employees, so the wage survey does not capture them properly.
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 low-paying 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 usually the best value in the country.
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. Thirty-two states plus the District of Columbia and several territories 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, Florida, Texas and New York run their own versions. 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. The best paid corner of private practice.
Criminal, prosecution or defense
The fastest route to actual courtroom time, and the lowest pay early on.
Family, immigration and housing
Where most ordinary people meet a lawyer. Emotionally heavy, often underpaid, always needed.
Intellectual property
Patent work requires a science or engineering degree on top, and it pays for it.
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 pays a premium and has fewer applicants.
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.
Roughly 864,800 people work as lawyers in the United States, with about 31,500 openings a year. Growth is average, around 3 to 4 percent, so the field is large and stable rather than expanding.
Thirty-two states plus the District of Columbia use the same Uniform Bar Examination, and a score earned in one of them can be transferred to another. California, Florida, Texas and New York stayed out, which is why lawyers moving there often sit a second exam.
Between July 2026 and July 2028 most jurisdictions switch to a redesigned bar exam with integrated question sets and legal research tasks instead of pure memorization. The old format stays available until February 2028.
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.
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.