Occupation / job
Paralegals and Legal Assistants
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 $62,890 midpoint puts Paralegals and Legal Assistants $12,870 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 26% 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.
392,880 people work as Paralegals and Legal Assistants — large enough that the occupation is always hiring somewhere and always losing people somewhere else. Constant demand is security; it is rarely leverage.
Legal support work suits people who can be relied on for accuracy under a filing deadline, and who are content that the credit for the outcome goes to the person arguing it.
How long it takes to become one of the 392,880 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
$50,340 to $80,080 — 1.6x, or $2,478 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Paralegals and Legal Assistants is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
Even the 25th percentile pays $50,340, $320 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $24.20 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Paralegals and Legal Assistants.
Avoid it if you would resent doing the substantive work on a matter that will be signed, argued and credited by someone else.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 392,880 people employed as Paralegals and Legal Assistants; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
At 1.6x between $50,340 and $80,080 this is a normally shaped occupation. $62,890 is what the middle of Paralegals and Legal Assistants earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $50,340 and $80,080. That is $29,740 of range, with $62,890 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $80,080. Reaching it from the $62,890 midpoint is $17,190 a year; reaching it from the $50,340 that the bottom quarter of Paralegals and Legal Assistants earn is $29,740.
The climb from $62,890 to $80,080 is $17,190, against $12,550 down to $50,340. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Paralegals and Legal Assistants is larger than the realistic downside.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $24.20 at the bottom quarter, $30.23 at the midpoint, $38.50 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Paralegals and Legal Assistants. The self-employed are excluded, so $62,890 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $62,890 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Paralegals and Legal Assistants, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else