What is the highest salary for a law professor?

Asked by: Waino Littel  |  Last update: January 23, 2026
Score: 4.9/5 (33 votes)

Law professor salaries typically range between $87,000 and $269,000 yearly. The average hourly rate for law professors is $73.74 per hour. Law professor salary is impacted by location, education, and experience. Law professors earn the highest average salary in California.

How much do top law professors make?

While ZipRecruiter is seeing salaries as high as $191,258 and as low as $124,991, the majority of Law Professor salaries currently range between $167,000 (25th percentile) to $190,200 (75th percentile) with top earners (90th percentile) making $190,180 annually in Los Angeles.

What type of professor gets paid the most?

The 10 Highest-Paying Fields for College Professors
  1. Law teachers - $129,950. ...
  2. Health specialties teachers - $121,620. ...
  3. Economics teachers - $119,160. ...
  4. Political science teachers - $102,290. ...
  5. Physics teachers - $101,110. ...
  6. Anthropology and archaeology teachers - $95,140. ...
  7. Environmental science teachers - $93,450.

Do you need a PhD to be a law professor?

Although many teaching positions require a Masters, LLM, or Doctoral degree this is not typically required for law school professors. However, postgraduate degrees may provide more opportunities for publication, as well as experience teaching, both of which can be helpful when pursuing a permanent teaching position.

What is the highest salary in law?

In 2024, the highest paying law firms in India offer starting salaries ranging from ₹15-18 LPA for fresh graduates, with senior lawyers and partners earning up to ₹1 crore annually.

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16 related questions found

Can lawyers make 300k a year?

Well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for attorneys in the US is just over $125,000. The highest-paid lawyers (10% of the legal workforce) make over $208,000 However, the top 1% of attorneys make $500,000 or more per year.

What is the highest-paid position in law?

Highest-Paid Types of Lawyers
  • Patent attorney: $180,000.
  • Intellectual property (IP) attorney: $162,000.
  • Trial lawyer: $134,000.
  • Tax attorney: $122,000.
  • Corporate lawyer: $115,000.
  • Medical lawyer: $113,000.
  • Real estate lawyer: $98,000.
  • Family lawyer: $93,000.

How many years does it take to become a law professor?

After you graduate from law school and earn your legal credentials, it's helpful to spend at least three to five years practicing law at a law firm or independently. This can give you practical experience and allow you to learn industry knowledge, which can help you become a highly qualified legal professor.

Do law professors have to pass the bar exam?

Becoming a law professor is a challenging but rewarding career path for many attorneys. Prospective professors must first obtain a JD and pass the bar exam, then obtain advanced degrees and research/publication experience.

Which law schools produce the most professors?

Here is the distribution in the first FAR for the 16 schools that produce the most law teachers: Harvard (24), Yale (21), NYU (10), Michigan (9), Columbia and Georgetown (8 each), Berkeley (7), Stanford (6), UCLA (4), Chicago, Virginia, Penn, Cornell, and Duke (3 each), Northwestern and Texas (2 each).

Can a professor make 200k?

Professors in top-paying fields like law and business or at prestigious universities can earn $200,000 or more annually.

What professor is most in demand?

There is a high need for professors in disciplines like computer science, bioinformatics, health-related fields, data science, and engineering, particularly in areas that are rapidly evolving. This is due to the ongoing tech boom and increasing importance of healthcare and life sciences.

What state pays professors the most?

Highest paying cities for Professors near United States
  • Columbus, OH. $173,273 per year. 3 salaries reported.
  • College Station, TX. $167,278 per year. 7 salaries reported.
  • Sacramento, CA. $163,930 per year. 13 salaries reported.
  • Boston, MA. $126,918 per year. 14 salaries reported.
  • University Park, FL. $95,312 per year.

Do professors make more than lawyers?

Lawyers typically earn higher pay than teachers. Teachers make an average annual salary of $31,482 per year , while the average annual salary for a lawyer is $58,174 per year . Remember that factors like location, industry, experience and employer can influence pay for both professions.

What percentage of law professors have Phds?

Seventy-one percent of professors earned degrees from top law schools, but getting a prestigious law degree is increasingly not enough to land a teaching job. According to the report, 57 percent of faculty who got law degrees between 2010 and 2023 also have a master's or doctoral degree.

What is the hardest law bar exam?

Is The California Bar Exam Hard? Yes, the California bar exam is widely considered to be the most difficult of all state bar exams in the US. The California bar exam has a pass rate of 34%.

Is being a law professor hard?

It can be quite demanding to write academic articles while also supervising students in law practice. Some schools do not require clinical faculty to write academic articles or may permit clinical faculty to produce scholarship of a different type or at a slower pace.

What states do not require law school to be a lawyer?

Before you can practice law, you will need to choose a state that will allow you to take the bar exam without completing law school. Currently, Washington, Vermont, California and Virginia are the only four states that allow this process.

What is the average age of a law professor?

Age and Gender

Tenured law professors in the AT study ranged in age from 30 to over 70 years old. The majority fell between 40 and 69 years of age, with 40% of the respondents falling between 50 and 59 years of age (Table 3). 4Some of the percentages provided in the text are not directly cited in the tables.

What do law professors do during the summer?

Is it true that law professors get the summers off? No, it is not true. During the summer, although many are not required to teach, law professors are researching, writing, and presenting papers, speaking at events, and preparing course materials.

What are law school professors called?

These titles denote “the other teachers” in the legal academy: Clinical Professor, Professor of Practice, Teaching Professor, and Legal Writing Instructor, to name a few. The message is that “Professors of Law” are the ones who really teach the law, while those with the other titles teach something else less important.

Which type of lawyer is the richest?

As of 2024, the top five highest paid types of lawyers are:
  • Patent Attorneys.
  • Intellectual property (IP) Attorneys.
  • Trial Lawyers.
  • Tax Attorneys.
  • Corporate Lawyers.

What field of law is most in demand?

Which Legal Fields Are in Demand?
  • Intellectual property law. ...
  • Family law. ...
  • Immigration & naturalization law. ...
  • Real estate law. ...
  • Contract management. ...
  • Compliance. ...
  • Labor and employment. ...
  • Corporate transactions. Also known as mergers and acquisitions, or M&A, this work navigates the buying and selling of companies and their assets.

Which field in law makes the most money?

Trial Lawyer

There is the most competition arising profession in the legal career and also the most paying one. The salary and other benefits may vary according to the job location and relevance of the case. Delhi and Mumbai are the two high paying job locations.