Occupation / job
Law Teachers, Postsecondary
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
The $128,500 midpoint is $6,540 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Law Teachers, Postsecondary near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
20,060 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Law Teachers, Postsecondary becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.
This work suits people who want to spend a career inside one subject, teaching it while contributing to it, and who can tolerate an institution whose incentives do not always favour either.
How long it takes to become one of the 20,060 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
The gap between the bottom quarter of Law Teachers, Postsecondary at $88,700 and the top quarter at $176,490 is $87,790 — a ratio of 2.0x. Wide enough that the headline median describes almost nobody, and treating it as your number is a planning error.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $88,700 — $42.64 an hour, $38,680 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Law Teachers, Postsecondary is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
Avoid it if the administrative and committee load would spoil the subject for you, because it is a large share of the week.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 20,060 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
From $88,700 to $176,490 at 2.0x: something inside this occupation sorts people a long way apart. Identifying what it is — sector, employer, credential — is worth more than any general advice about Law Teachers, Postsecondary.
Put in money rather than ratios: $88,700 at the 25th percentile, $128,500 at the midpoint, $176,490 at the 75th. $87,790 separates the quarter of Law Teachers, Postsecondary at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $176,490. Reaching it from the $128,500 midpoint is $47,990 a year; reaching it from the $88,700 that the bottom quarter of Law Teachers, Postsecondary earn is $87,790.
From $128,500 it is $39,800 down to the bottom quarter and $47,990 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 Law Teachers, Postsecondary is $61.77 an hour. The quarters sit at $42.64 and $84.85, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Law Teachers, Postsecondary. The self-employed are excluded, so $128,500 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $128,500 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else