Whenever Biglaw offers another salary boost — as they did last year — many of us allow the Cravath-approved scale to serve as a stand-in for lawyer salaries generally. But Biglaw isn’t the norm and attorneys around the country can and do get by on lower salaries, even if law school isn’t appreciably cheaper for them.
Forbes recently took a look at attorney salaries across the country and the compensation gains lawyers have made over the past few years. Unsurprisingly, California and New York have the country’s richest lawyers on average. But what state has the country’s poorest lawyers?
It’s Montana, where the average lawyer salary is a mere $88,600. How bad is that? To put it into perspective, that’s almost $10K less than the state with the second lowest average salary (which is Mississippi at $97,990).
It’s a little surprising that Montana is so low on this list. No one expects New York salaries in Missoula, but the state has powerful ranching and energy interests that one might have thought could support some high-priced attorneys to inflate that average.
But, as the author of the Forbes piece notes, things are arguably pretty good for Montana attorneys because salaries are actually up 17.6 percent since 2013. Watch out, Mississippi!