Posted Lawyer Pay Slips to $215,000 Median, Down From $284,985 a Month Earlier

The posted median for Lawyer roles on the boards we track came in at $215,000 over the last 30 days, down from $284,985 in the 30 days before that. That is a drop of $69,985, or about 24.6%.

Before reading anything into it: the recent figure rests on 11 listings that disclosed pay, and the earlier one on 36. These are employer-posted salary ranges annualized to USD — what companies wrote in the ad, not what anyone reported earning. At 11 listings, a couple of big-firm or in-house postings landing in or out of the window moves the median by tens of thousands of dollars.

The pool shrank faster than the number

The more durable part of this signal is volume, not pay. Lawyer postings carrying a salary range fell from 36 to 11 between the two 30-day windows — a two-thirds decline — while overall new postings across the boards we track went the other way, 29,758 in the last 30 days against 28,085 in the prior 30.

So the mix behind the median changed a lot in one month. Fewer disclosing listings usually means fewer distinct employers in the pool, and with legal roles the top of the range is where the money is.

Where $215,000 sits against other occupations

Even after the decline, the Lawyer median is high relative to most occupations with deep salary pools on the boards we track. It sits below Engineering Manager at $280,000 across 245 listings, Machine Learning Engineer at $274,000 across 129, Product Manager at $247,300 across 391, and Software Engineer at $240,000 across 1,327. It lands above Account Executive at $205,600 and Mechanical Engineer at $186,000.

The contrast in pool size is the point. Software Engineer's median draws on 1,327 disclosing listings; Lawyer's draws on 11. One of those numbers will barely twitch next month, and the other could move 20% either way.

Lawyer is not alone in swinging

Of the eight occupations with a measurable posted-median move in the packet, three moved down and five moved up, and almost all of them are working from thin pools:

• Engineer: $179,090 to $90,750, with listings falling from 15 to 5 — the sharpest decline of the group.
• Network Engineer: $215,050 to $160,000, listings from 17 to 5.
• Sales Executive: $256,900 to $325,000, listings from 47 to 33 — the largest disclosing pool in the set.
• Manufacturing Engineer: $156,000 to $222,000, listings from 79 to 21.
• Store Manager: $77,925 to $125,000, on 10 then 9 listings.

Six of the eight saw their disclosing pool shrink between the two windows. Lawyer's drop, 36 to 11, is the second-steepest proportional decline in the group after Manufacturing Engineer's 79 to 21.

For anyone tracking legal pay, the practical read is to watch the count as closely as the median. A Lawyer pool back above 30 disclosing listings would say more about the direction of posted pay than this month's $215,000 does. You can follow the daily movement on US hiring trends, day by day or browse the full Occupations index.