Paralegals and Legal Assistants
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia comes first for this job on every measure. $89,750 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $60,746 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For paralegals and legal assistants, the District of Columbia's $89,750 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $60,746. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$62,890
People doing it
392,880
Highest paid
$89,750
DC
Best off, really
$60,746
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,740
Highest tenth
$101,500
Lowest, really
$42,381
AL
States with data
51
National average
$69,700
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $42,381 to $60,746.
- Roughly 392,880 people hold this job nationally, earning $62,890 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $62,890. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation in paralegals and legal assistants pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $42,381 to $60,746, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- 392,880 are employed nationally in paralegals and legal assistants, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for paralegals and legal assistants is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Paralegals and Legal Assistants
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,740 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,890 |
| Top tenth earn over | $101,500 |
| This salary | $62,890 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Paralegals and Legal Assistants
The national median for this job
$62,890around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,740 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,890 |
| Top tenth | $101,500 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Paralegals and Legal Assistants, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $46,180 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $89,750 |
| Spread | $43,570 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $62,310 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $64,121 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $89,750 | $67,309 | $60,746 |
| CO | $78,190 | $61,105 | $60,272 |
| WA | $79,400 | $64,688 | $59,586 |
| MN | $75,570 | $58,378 | $59,317 |
| ND | $59,430 | $49,932 | $56,374 |
| NE | $63,250 | $50,827 | $56,240 |
| AK | $68,700 | $57,160 | $56,197 |
| NV | $64,680 | $54,150 | $55,837 |
| SD | $58,320 | $49,040 | $55,667 |
| LA | $60,250 | $49,170 | $55,656 |
| VT | $67,160 | $53,755 | $55,627 |
| MA | $77,640 | $59,888 | $55,330 |
| OH | $60,420 | $49,782 | $54,222 |
| MO | $61,410 | $49,574 | $54,025 |
| NM | $59,840 | $48,615 | $53,786 |
| TX | $62,310 | $52,246 | $53,765 |
| TN | $58,820 | $49,442 | $53,442 |
| CA | $77,390 | $60,155 | $53,433 |
| KY | $59,830 | $48,277 | $53,364 |
| WV | $59,000 | $47,763 | $53,204 |
| MI | $62,170 | $49,742 | $52,814 |
| UT | $63,220 | $50,164 | $52,803 |
| PA | $63,370 | $51,152 | $52,464 |
| NJ | $71,500 | $56,728 | $52,100 |
| GA | $62,400 | $49,803 | $51,504 |
| MT | $57,290 | $46,277 | $51,279 |
| ME | $62,420 | $49,441 | $50,919 |
| IL | $63,670 | $50,332 | $50,915 |
| WI | $58,500 | $47,154 | $50,651 |
| DE | $63,110 | $49,953 | $50,329 |
| VA | $63,990 | $50,677 | $50,300 |
| IN | $57,030 | $46,351 | $50,281 |
| IA | $54,550 | $44,550 | $50,187 |
| MD | $65,640 | $52,167 | $50,178 |
| NY | $68,410 | $53,859 | $50,043 |
| AZ | $61,630 | $50,561 | $50,009 |
| NC | $57,500 | $46,596 | $49,497 |
| FL | $61,000 | $51,194 | $49,485 |
| NH | $62,040 | $52,029 | $49,389 |
| CT | $63,820 | $50,699 | $48,896 |
| OK | $53,170 | $43,010 | $48,717 |
| KS | $55,000 | $43,592 | $48,454 |
| SC | $53,880 | $44,216 | $47,454 |
| WY | $49,490 | $41,945 | $46,171 |
| HI | $62,840 | $49,339 | $45,428 |
| AR | $47,420 | $38,986 | $45,066 |
| RI | $56,250 | $45,687 | $45,051 |
| OR | $61,490 | $46,757 | $44,649 |
| ID | $49,690 | $40,326 | $44,108 |
| MS | $46,180 | $37,530 | $42,994 |
| AL | $47,260 | $38,130 | $42,381 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $62,890, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is the District of Columbia, at $67,309.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Alabama sits at the bottom on $42,381.
- These are distribution medians for paralegals and legal assistants, with a national value of $62,890. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for paralegals and legal assistants model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $67,309, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- The price deflation applied to paralegals and legal assistants uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Alabama at $42,381. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Alabama anchors the bottom at $42,381 — and the two source series are dated independently.