Occupation / job
Judicial Law Clerks
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A $64,920 midpoint puts Judicial Law Clerks $14,900 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 30% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
Nationally 13,290 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Judicial Law Clerks is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
Legal practice suits people who read closely, argue in writing, and can live with an adversarial structure where someone competent is paid to defeat them.
How long it takes to become one of the 13,290 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
From $52,870 to $80,420 is $2,295 a month, or 1.5x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
Even the 25th percentile pays $52,870, $2,850 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $25.41 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Judicial Law Clerks.
Avoid it if the adversarial format is draining rather than energising; the hours are long and the format does not soften.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 13,290 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
1.5x between $52,870 and $80,420 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $64,920 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
In cash terms the middle half of Judicial Law Clerks runs $52,870 to $80,420 — $27,550 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $64,920.
Getting to $80,420, the 75th percentile, is worth $15,500 a year more than the $64,920 midpoint and $27,550 more than the $52,870 a quarter of Judicial Law Clerks settle for.
From $64,920 it is $12,050 down to the bottom quarter and $15,500 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Judicial Law Clerks is $31.21 an hour. The quarters sit at $25.41 and $38.66, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $64,920 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Judicial Law Clerks, the hourly figure is $64,920 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else